lia_b

Hi,
My D will be doing a six week study abroad program in London and Oxford. Can anyone recommend a cell service that will allow her to call us in the states and even more important have cheap text service so she can keep in touch with her friends who only talk by text.

Thank you.

flanneruk

No. And anyone else so doing will be doing so in ignorance.

Deals offered by phone companies are changing all the time, and the only thing you can say for certain is that any specific supplier recommendation given today will be wrong in a few weeks' time.

She should shop round three or four phone shops (which must include Carphone Warehouse, as well as any other on her local High Street) when here, ask for their advice (in the case of CW, generally excellent but they're still salesmen) and use her judgement. It's also worthwhile checking any offers on the web from supermarket chains like Tesco.

If having her out of touch with you for a few days worries her (it won't) or you, she should bring the mobile she's using wherever she's now living. A couple of "I'm safely off the plane" texts using a foreign supplier aren't going to break a bank.

It now seems impossible to find a single student-age person on the streets of London or Oxford using an ordinary mobile: they all seem to have been conned into high-fashion smartphones. If you're footing any of the bill: it's still perfectly possible to get cheap (£15 or so) steam-age phones without any of this "£35 a month, but look at all the extras you get..." nonsense.

Suspaul

Have a world phone from AT&T, international rates aren't the best but very convenient as anyone calling us just dials our regular mobile number and can get in touch if needed. That said, have you looked into SKYPE, you and anyone else can download the SKYPE program for free onto your computer and talk computer to computer for free, anytime, anywhere - as long as both parties have it downloaded. Also, you can buy SKYPE minutes and call the US via your computer very reasonably, we have a small laptop we travel with, usually it's about 2 cents per minute, the rates vary by country, for calls to the US. As for the text part, sorry, can't help with a cheap texting tho.
Susan

jent103

Don't buy it in the States. Take flanner's advice - no-contract phones are so easy to get in the UK and have much cheaper international rates than any US phone (if she has one that even works in the UK - Verizon does not, for example, unless you rent a special phone from them).

Suspaul's advice about Skype is good, though, for the times when she wants to have longer chats. A lot of the college students I know Skype with their friends at other schools, so that may be a good way for her to keep in touch with them too.

MFNYC

When my D took a 6 week summer trip to Europe we purchased a phone from http://www.telestial.com. They have difference packages based on the type of usage. We still have the phone and have used it for other overseas trips. The plan we have is cheaper for us (in US) to call Europe than vica versa, so if she wanted to talk, she called, and then we hung up and called her right back. I think texts from the states to Europe were free but there was a charge in the other direction.

alanRow

Carphonewarehouse had an Alcatel OT 209 phone for 99p plus £10 top up - but it's shot up in price to £2.95 now

flanneruk

Have any of the posters seriously suggesting using AMERICAN phone companies in Britain ever been students?

Or ever looked at what students do?

The poster may well be under the bizarre, but almost understandable, delusion that her daughter's main use of the phone's going to be calling her mother. If that's true, someone ought to write to the Guinness Book of Records - but that's the sort of nonsense mothers go in for.

But for the rest of you: what world do you live in?

The daughter will be using the phone to call the boy she picked up last night. To tell her friends at college Bar X is checking IDs. To send photos of fellow-drinkers, in indecent poses, to her classmates. To call taxis, or find out the times of trains. To organise another piss-up. And an infinity of other calls, all to people within a one mile radius, about subjects best kept quiet about on a family chatroom.

Now if she really wants, single-handedly, to turn the US economy round, she'll pay the insane costs of doing that via a carrier thousands of miles away.

But she won't. Give her one of the extraordinary, Americacentric, solutions suggested and she'll decide parents these days are even more remote from getting it than she'd thought.

And go down to Carphone Warehouse to find a proper phone, unless a fellow student tells her there's a deal on at Tesco. Because the real experts on this aren't (obviously, given what you're being told) here. They'll be in her London or Oxford classroom.

lia_b

Thank you everyone for your suggestions. FlannerUK, I don't know if you are a parent but I certainly am not under delusion that I am getting this phone for my daughter to call me constantly. She is away at college currently and does not call me everyday. I don't expect it as she has a life. However, we keep in contact via text, email or whatever is convenient daily because we have that kind of relationship. I don't know that this is an American thing. I still speak to my mom a few times a week. Everyone in our family does that with their parents. A quick hello, are you ok showing that someone cares. Do you have that in your life?

In her case, I expect that she will need a phone to be in touch with us, her friends, her boyfriend and to make local phone calls as well as we all need. I don't see how this is delusional. I don't know what your experience has been with American girls but they all do not drink, pick up men at bars nightly or pose indecently for their fellow drinkers.

I am not looking to use an American carrier as it would be too expensive. I expected to get leads for a reasonable phones locally. Thank you again everyone for your leads. I think a pay as you go phone from Carphone Warehouse might do the trick.

isabel

My daughter is currently in grad school in the UK. She has previously done three other study/internship/work abroads. She bought a cheap £10 phone - comes with a sim card. You "top it up" at any grocery store like Tescos,etc. Texts are cheap, calls to the US are not outrageous but expensive enough that you wouldn't want to do it regularly. Fine for the occasional time when you need to call home immediately. For regular calls home we use Skype. Skype also allows you to call a phone (land line or mobile/cell) so I don't have to be sitting at my computer for her to skype me.

If her current phone is unlocked (or she can get it unlocked, ATT is quite nice about that if you've been with them a while) she can just buy a sim card and will have a better phone than the cheap ones. I was there recently and when I got to Victoria Station there were at least four stores (including CarPhoneWarehouse) right there to choose from. They all offer different plans and some of them have "sort of" cheap international calls. But they still not as cheap as skype and then the texts are more so I'd say go with the cheap text plan and use skype for calling home.

mrcamp

Like others said, let her get to the UK and buy a sim there. If she has a phone here and your carrier is AT&T/Tmobile, the phone will probably work there. Just get it unlocked by contacting the carrier for the code. Almost all the UK carriers have plans that will allow you to call the US for very cheap. For example, on Orange you can call the US for about 6p/min. There is also the Lebara that my family there use to call me. It may even be cheaper than 6p/min. They give away sim cards there, so she just needs the phoine and to buy topups.

janisj

"<i>American girls but they all do not drink, pick up men at bars nightly or pose indecently for their fellow drinkers. </i>"

Or at least that is what their mothers think

flanner may have piled it on a bit -- but he and others are correct about the best option. Have her wait until she in in England--it will be much cheaper than a US-based plan.

For the day or two (or 3) she takes to get that sorted out -- she can use e-mail -- which (w/ texting) is actually often a better option. Because of the time difference, the best times for her to call are when you are asleep or you'll be calling when she is.

janisj

asleep that is . . . .

xyz123

isabel...I will disagree with your sttement...I know the thread is a month old but I've been away (in the UK) as well as in the hospital but I feel it necessary to respond to one thing.

Believe it or not, with almost all UK carriers, to call the USA on a prepaid sim, not only is it cheap, it is outrageously cheap although you have to sign up with the provider for their foreign plan. With Orange UK, their camel plan is 6p/minute. Vodafone and T Mobile UK have foreign calling plan, free to sign up for, that costs 5p/ inute to call the USA from the UK. Lebarra is 4p/minute to call the USA. In all cases, the sim cards are literally being given away for free and all you pay for is as little as 5 quid for an initial top up. Lebarra sales people hang out all over the place. T Mobile UK and Orange UK and Vodafone UK stores are all over the place. What you do need is a dirt cheap European band gsm phone...available on ebay or in most any store in the UK.

But wait. It gets better. There is a firm called yourcallworld. Go to their web site. They give you a triggering number 290 379 which you can use on T Mobile UK and Orange UK (which are in process of merging into one big happy company). Calls to foreign landlines all over the world cost 3p/minute (not a typo). All calls are timed not to the next highest minute but to the second. What we're talking here is calling card rates on a mobile. And all calls to North America (USA and Canada) are considered landline calls even to a North American mobile. 3p/minute! You can't beat that.

As noted, English sim cards are FREE. By going to the various web sites, you can even have them post up to 4 sim cards to your first hotel so if you already have an unlocked gsm phone with 900mhz and a800 mhz bands, you just stick the sim card into the phone, go to any chemist, grocery store, petrol station, convenience store, top up for as little as £5 and you're on. Calls you receive while in the UK are always FREE. And, for Americans who tend to be monolingual, don't worry. English is a language very close to American and you will not find it too difficult to communicate with clerks.

Right now, and this is not likely to change because of the competition, it is a very easy deal.

stokebailey

Thanks xyz123!

Hooameye

"English is a language very close to American and you will not find it too difficult to communicate with clerks."

I do wonder sometimes, especially when I see questions like "what's a coach".

Ackislander

On another forum recently, a group of 20 somethings decided that 10,000 text messages a month is by no means excessive because each end of the ocnversation is charged, sending and receiving.

Having studied the behavior academically since 1994, I don't think FlannerUK is too far off on the typical content, whatever parents want to think.

xyz123

A coach is a person who manages a basketball, ice hockey or football team and in baseball works with various players to improve their skills. We also in some schools have coaches who work with teachers to improve their skills. Did you mean a bus vehicle or a train car? But then again, isn't a car on a train called a carriage? I thought a carriage was something you wheeled a baby in. But I am glad there are so many lifts to elevate myself in a building...it would seem elevator would be a much better term.

I imagine if the ability to listen to each other's radio broadcasts and later watch each other's television programs and movies, the situation would be even more dire. <g>

stokebailey

If Flanner had a young daughter newly living on the other side of the world, I don't think he'd welcome our speculating about her behavior.

spaarne

My daughter studied in Paris last August. Her dorm had free WiFi. We used Skype instead of the telephone. It is totally free, plus you can see who you are talking with.

Fodorite018

Our DD will be studying abroad this summer and her program gives the students a cell phone to use while they are there. I know the other program she looked into did not do that. So you just might want to double check with the program. No reason to spend money on this if it is already covered