Cell phone while in London
 

How can I arrange to have a cell (mobile) phone during our holiday? It seems our apartment has no phone (at least none is listed in the discription) and I'd feel better having a phone.

Does anyone know what I can do? Will mine (from Canada)work in London?

If your phone is tri or quad band, chances are it will work in the UK.

You will need to call your service provider and get 'roaming' activated, before you leave, if it isn't already 'on'.

If you plan on making a ton of calls it might make more sense to get a mobile over here. If you just want it for emergancies, use your own. Do you have an international charger, or is the trip short enough that it'll stay charged up if switched off?

You can buy one over there for $20 Cdn or so and just do a pay as you go. Then you have it for another trip, or can loan it to friends.
Its the cheapest and least hassle.

Husband's t-mobile blackberry worked in London when we were there last month. My verizon phone did not work so I bought one of those cheap pre-paid phones. It worked great for local calls.

Great I'll pick up a pay-as-you-go. Any suggestions as to where I'd find one?

I only want it in case of emergency otherwise we have our laptop to contact folks at home.

I'm told that these days it's impossible not to find a phone shop in almost every street in the UK.

A friend from London had the opposite problem... for his visit to Canada his UK provider was going to charge him 1.39 POUNDS a minute! I picked up a Virgin Mobile at a Walmart for under 20 bucks and sent it to his hotel where it was handed to him on arrival in Vancouver.

If you want a phone ready to go when you arrive I have had very good service from callineurope.com.

Rob

This is not an advertisement, but I've had good luck with CarPhoneWarehouse shops in the UK:

http://www.carphonewarehouse.com

Depending upon how you intend to use the phone, you can buy different SIMs and calling packages. By that I mean: do you just want a phone so you can be contacted by folks back at home, or do you intend to call home, or will you use it as a local phone???? Calling rates vary and a bit of looking at the details on the website might be useful before you go, eh?

And, of course, you SAID that in your follow up posting: as an emergency contact device. Duh.

I just went to an Orange store in London and purchased a pre-paid cell phone. The phone is inexpensive (as low as 10-15 GBP for a simple one) and you can prepay for some calls. I think I put 50 GBP on it.

I looked at the Orange website: www.orange.co.uk for info. If you go into the 'Orange Shop', you can click on 'pay as you go' for information and also find store locations in London.

Wow thank you all so much! I'm off to check out the sites you've offered me. Sounds like it won't be a problem at all.

I wonder how folks managed to have relaxed holiday before the net?

<i> wonder how folks managed to have relaxed holiday before the net?</i>

Maybe we all obsessed less? :)

We've been a lot of this before and I'm too lazy to keep repeating myself (click on my name above and you'll find some excellent advice) but I'll go through a few things that might prove helpful..

UK mobile (the name used there) PAYG (pay as you go) rate are among the cheapest in the world and there is obviously no language problem (Germany is pretty good too, but if you don't speak German you may have difficulties following the instructions or setting up voicemail)..

Start with the phone...

You may already have a gsm phone from your provider...if may have at least one if not both of the frequencies used in the UK (900 and 1800 mhz)...you can ask your provider, if it's gsm (T Mobile US and AT&amp;T but not Verizon or Sprint) to help you unlock the phone. GSM phones operate with a little chip called a sim card which determines a lot about the phone...change the sim card and the phone has a completely different number, provider etc. When a phone is locked it will only accept the sim card of the company that provided the phone. Unlocking the phone allows you to put any sim card in it and the phone will connect to the provider of that sim card or its roaming partners.

Competition is very fierce in the UK...many companies are literally giving the sim cards away if you top up with &pound;10 worth of credit or you can buy say a T Mobile UK sim card on the web for about $6 US including shipping to a US (I think also Canadian) address or you can wait till you get to the UK.

Carphone warehouse is indeed a good place to start. If you have an unlocked gsm phone you can simply buy a sim card actually procure a sim card is a better word as for many companies the sim card is free if you purchase &pound;10 worth of calling credit. Or they can sell you a cheap gsm phone as noted for as little as &pound;15.

With any UK sim card, you will get free reception of calls while in the UK. The caller pays and will pay a bit of a premium if calling a mobile phone from North America although not overwhelming. There are all sorts of variations of getting call forwarding to the UK mobile number but won't go through all the possibilities right now.

As far as making calls, there are different policies and it is constantly changing. Right now, today, it seems the best bet for a North Americans is a sim card from a company sponsored by Carphone Warehouse called Talk Mobile. They use vodafone towers so coverage will be excellent. They have a promotion on right now with calls to North America at 2p/minute; it will end at the end of the month as I uderstand it and then the price will double to an overwhelming 4p/minute. I've written about T Mobile UK and its tie in with Callbackworld for calls to North America at 3p/minute. Calls within the UK to local UK landlines are not overwhelmingly expensive but have just gone up a bit with one minute minimums now being charged. You can check the web sites for details. Orange UK has a PAYG card called Camel (it used to be Call Abroad) which features calls to the USA for 6p/minute. Details again are available on the web sites.

All of these allow roaming within the eu for relatively cheap rates thanks to the eu's insistance so if you take a weekend trip via Eurostar to Paris or Brussels, you will do fine.

You can look up on the various web sites (orange.uk or T mobile UK, or Talk Mobile uK or CarphoneWarehouse) the particulars for UK rates and whether any of the rates have increased or decreased recently.

The fact is it's almost laughable given these rates in this day and age not to have a mobile phone while in the UK remembering also that if you rely on international roaming with your current plans, you will pay 99¢/minute to both make and recieve calls if you are a T Mobile US customer, $1.29/minute to make and receive calls if an AT&amp;T customer although you can reduce that to the same rates as T Mobile by paying $5.99/month and with the UK&pound; dropping the way it is, the local UK sims, very easy to obtain as noted there seems to be a mobile phone shop on every corner in London (just walk down Oxford Street and you'll see what I mean) are a far far better deal today than throwing money away to the over priced rip off international roaming rates charged by T Mobile USA and AT&amp;T unless you're completely sure you only want to make a call or two.

Forgive all the typos, but I can't pick them up till I see my post posed and fodors refuses to modernize this bulletin board to allow post posting editing.

Come on guys, join the 21st century.

xyz123 I understand why you didn't want to retype all that great information. Thank you for taking the time. I've followed your advice and we will be picking up a phone on arrival.

We only want it for emergencies and so we don't need much for time put into it but we'll sort that out on arrival too.

Perfect advice and certainly a lot to dig through.........but I sure did! :)

Our phone here is with Bell......I'm not going to bother to see if we can have it unlocked or not. We'll just buy one at &pound;10 and not worry about it.

Timlin - that's what I figured too. Locking, unlocking, too much trouble to deal with when a phone with UK simcard is so cheap and easy.

Good luck!

If you buy a Pay as you go phone you don't need to load much on it because it is easy to add more. In town you can call into one of the shops of the provider and buy more time or use an ATM machine (English:Hole in the Wall) where the main companies offer the top up service with the same card that you use to withdraw money. Major ATM providers possibly not the ones in hotel foyers. I'm not technical and find recharging them is the major handicap to this technology being very useful compared to old fashioned land lines, obviously no good on the move.

It's even easier than that to add more time (top up)....

Most of the providers give you a card the size and shape and feel of a credit card. Most chemists (drug store types), chain store groceries, mobile phone stores, petrol stations will have a decal showing they do top ups. Give the clerk the card say you wish to top up, tell them the amount, they run the card through the terminal much as if it's a credit card, pay and you've topped up.

One of the simpler parts of the operation if you ask me.

xyz: A hint for posting - If you click on &quot;preview my reply&quot; you can see everything as it will appear in the final. If there are typos or anything else you want to change, click on &quot;edit&quot; and it brings back the text box where you can keep typing/editing.

I have an Orange &quot;Pay as You Go&quot; plan and their stores are everywhere. You go to their website and find a store near where you are staying and have it pre-arranged. Topping up the phone is easy, either online or buy a top-up card at Boots or bookstores. Very easy and the best way to go. www.orange.co.uk , I think. good luck.

janisi...

Thanks...I'm aware of that but I'm not good at picking up my typos immediately after writing the post (most of the typos occur because I type too fast and the computer doesn't pick up all the letters I type)...I really have to step away, just like anything I write and read it a couple of minutes later (I take too much for granted)...

As I said, most modern bulletin boards I deal with have a key to edit the post after it has been posted....this one is ancient and does not which is still a disservice to the posters who are made to look dumb.

But thank you for the suggestion, I do appreciate it!

Unlocking - getting your phone modified so that a sim card from another provider can be used. Thus you can avoid roaming charges when overseas by using a 'local' sim.

Roaming - enabling your phone to use affiliated service providers when overseas. It does not normally require the phone to be 'unlocked', though, which seems to be a common misconception on here.

<i>...most modern bulletin boards I deal with have a key to edit the post after it has been posted...</i>

This one does, too. It's labeled &quot;Back&quot; or &quot;Backspace&quot; on most keyboards.

Rule One: always hit &quot;Preview my reply&quot; (<i>i.e.</i>, do not go directly to &quot;Post my reply&quot;) when you've entered text. After you have posted, you can edit by backing up (&quot;Back&quot;) until you reach the frame where &quot;Edit&quot; is offered. Don't back up further.

Select &quot;Edit&quot;
Change your deathless prose
Select &quot;Preview my reply&quot;
Select &quot;Post my reply&quot;

(You can also back up to a post you made any time in the past, the only requirement being that it's still in your browser's History.)

The main difference being -- IF one edits a post on those other sites, it clearly says &quot;<i>edited by _____ (date)</i>&quot;

It isn't just typos, you know. Here - all sorts of mischief has occurred when someone edits their mis-statements long after others have posted to the thread.

I checked out the orange website, but I am having problems getting the answer I need. I am buying the phone pay as you go, but I need it in Paris too, how does that work?

<i>The main difference being -- IF one edits a post on those other sites, it clearly says &quot;edited by _____ (date)&quot; </i>

True of some sites, not of others.

<i>Here - all sorts of mischief has occurred when someone edits their mis-statements long after others have posted to the thread. </i>

Do you like the feel of that high horse between your thighs?

You might want to check out
www.unitedmobile.com. Ordered a
SIM card from them for September
trip. It worked well and was
much less expensive than using roaming with our regular service.

Need to add a bit of info there--
as others have mentioned you need
an unlocked tri or quad band
phone.

Leaving aside the silly argument about being able to modify a post after it's been posted (we should have the ability to modify a post and I never use preview on other boards but let's leave that aside), you need a tri or quad band GSM phone...gsm being the 2nd generation digital technology in use in much of the world (3g and 4g technologies are coming out but gsm will be with us for a while yet)....

As far as Orange UK is concerned and international roaming, thanks to the foresight of the eu communcations director a person as I remember by the name of Redding almost all PAYG plans on local gsm sims within the eu, have relatively modest roaming arrangements...the key one being you can receive calls for something like &euro;0,24/minute (19p/minute)...at least that's been the rate so yes the Orange UK PAYG sim card will work in Paris for receiving calls but it will cost 19p/minute...calls within the eu are also relatively cheap but iw ould cost a bit to call outside the eu (although you can use an international calling card with a local (within the eu) triggering number.

With the cost of local sim card, especially within the UK being as low as it is, there is nothing to keep you from getting a local UK sim while in the UK and then using an international sim, such as United Mobile which is very good, for the rest of the trip.

A lot depends on your capability of setting up international call forwarding, for example. In my case, my local landline which is on Verizon, allows me to use international call forwarding and set it up remotely so I can really have my cake and eat it too...when I arrive in the UK, I set up the international call forwarding to the UK sim card, pay whatever my ld carrier charges and that's it..people can call my local NYC number, pay whatever is charged to call it domestically and it call forwards to the UK number while I'm in the UK..I pay something like 22¢/minute but nothing to the UK sim card...I can call back to the USA while in the UK for 3p/minute...then I switch over to the United Mobile sim card (which I've had for years)...there are other solutions.

Hope there aren't any typos as because of the absurdity this bulletin board refuses to go, I won't be able to fix them after I post.

Just checked the Talk Mobile website and I was correct (as usual but not 100% of the time, only 99% of the time)...international calls from the UK to North America are now up to 4p/minute (but of course, with the way the UK&pound; is tanking, that's now only about 6.8¢/minute US...within a month who knows how cheap that will be!

Matt...

Not bad but read the fine print...the sim card is free for the first three months and then $3.99/month thereafter. ouch

The point being made is that the competition is so fierce in the UK for UK local sim cards that they are FREE period; can't do much better than that eh.

Also if one needs a T Mobile UK sim card, I just checked ebay and they are being offered (no time included) by one merchant for about $6 to US and Canadian addresses shipping included...you won't have any time on it so your first stop on arrival will be to top it up for the first time with the swipe card but, if this is important to you, you will know the number.


Free sure beats $3.99/month any day of the week wouldn't you agree?

<i>...you need a tri or quad band GSM phone.</i>

Not necessarily. The two frequencies in use in Europe are 900 and 1800mHz. If your phone has these, that's all you need.

T-Mobile will sell you a PAYG SIM with &pound;5 credit on it for &pound;5 - so it's basically free. These chips are good for voice calls at per-minute rates, as well as unlimited internet access for &pound;1 per day or &pound;2.50 for five days. The first ten days are free (see goodybag, below).

T-Mo has a store on every other block in London. Some candy included with the SIM: http://t-mobile.co.uk/goodybag

XYZ123 - I have a question for you.

How do you get Verizon to allow the int'l call forwarding from my landline? I just checked their website and they seem to say that they won't do this for international numbers. Can you point me in the right direction? thank you.

I'm glad I came across such a helpful thread because I'm looking to buy a PAYG phone when I'm in the UK next week to keep for my upcoming trip to Germany/Austria/Italy. Since I have Verizon Wireless, they don't make it easy. It's so stupid since they're part of Vodafone.

I just checked..

I have remote call forwarding with verizon which is my landline carrier...I pay $4/month for call forwarding and I think it's another $2/month for remote call forwarding. Remote call forwarding allows you to dial a US toll free number and enter a destination number...after going through the preliminary steps you enter the foreign number starting with 011 country code local number omitting the lead zero for the most part...the call is forwarded via your designated long distance carrier which in my case is AT&amp;T...I have their special international ld package...I just checked and it works so I would presume it should work for you.....

Verizon many moons ago made the decision to use a technology other than gsm...of course technology keeps marching on and there have been all sorts of discussions on various mobile phone boards as to which technology is best and it is claimed gsm sucks as compared to CDMA which is I think the Verizon technology. Of course these are all 2nd generation digital technologies and 3g and 4g are all coming in which are far better for data. Vodafone has made several efforts to get into the US market notably about 4 years ago when they attempted to buy AT&amp;T mobile which was purchased by cingular and then cingular changed the name of its merged operation back to AT&amp;T.

I don't see any change in this in the near future. Verizon is the largest carrier in the USA and seems to be doing quite well and as noted gsm which will be around for a long while yet is slowly, very slowly, being phased out in favour of more advanced technologies but the same garbage is going on what with incompatible technologies and frequencies and no attempt to standardize on one technology and one frequency.

But for now, this old fashioned 2g technology will accomplish what you need in terms of voice communication.

thanks xyz! I think I'll just buy a phone in the UK and tell people in the US its number. If it's a true emergency, they'll call.

In that case, you might want check out these: http://www.t-mobile.co.uk/shop/mobil...-you-go/all/1/

You can get the LG KP100 for &pound;9.99 and a PAYG SIM for &pound;5. Then you'll have &pound;5 worth of talk time, and if you go to www.t-mobile.co.uk/goodybag, you can have 10 days of internet free.

Robes said - ''Not necessarily. The two frequencies in use in Europe are 900 and 1800mHz. If your phone has these, that's all you need.''

The OP asked if their Canadian phone would work in Europe. Since it's highly unlikely that anyone would buy a phone for use in North America that ONLY had the two frequencies used in Europe, then yes, it generally would have to be tri or quad band to be used on both continents.

There are good things to say about calldurope but not when it comes to British sim cards.

The competition in Britain is fierce and the companies are literally giving away the sim cards.

T Mobile UK, sim card free with purchase of I believe &pound;10 worth of credit with very cheap calls to North America and other places via yourcallworld.

Talk Mobile at Carphone Warehouse, sim card free with purchase of &pound;10 worth of credit. Very cheap calls out of country.

Orange camel...sim card free with purchase of &pound;10 worth of credit. Very cheap calls to North America.

When I say very cheap calls to North America, we are talking about prices such as 5p/minute, 3p/minute or whatever. A ten minute call to the USA via Talk Mobile is 30p. At today's rates, that's about 45¢. You're not going to beat that.

And of course there is no language problem in dealing with mobile phone companies and stores in the UK as American and English are very closely related languages (as is Australian or Canadian and English)...you should be able to communicate very easily with most clerks (although I must admit, that there are many people in London to whom English is a second language there from newly admitted to the eu countries in Eastern Europe and there language might be a bit of a problem)...but you'll certainly be able to read the manuals.

Now if you're talking France or Germany, yes that's another story.

<i>Author: RM67
Date: 11/21/2008, 11:53 am

The OP asked if their Canadian phone would work in Europe. Since it's highly unlikely that anyone would buy a phone for use in North America that ONLY had the two frequencies used in Europe, then yes, it generally would have to be tri or quad band to be used on both continents.
</i>
Yes. &quot;Unlikely&quot; and &quot;generally&quot; are correct. But not impossible. &quot;From Canada&quot; may or may not mean that it works on 850/1900

My primary intent was to help dispel the myth that only tri- or quad-band phones work overseas. Many people who don't have GSM in North America think they have to buy three or four bands for Europe when only two will suffice - and they wind up paying more than they need to for bands they will never use. This is rapidly becoming moot, because the chips that run cell phones nowadays are almost all quad-band - to simplify manufacturing phones for both markets.

''My primary intent was to help dispel the myth that only tri- or quad-band phones work overseas.''

What myth?

No-one has said that.

All anyone has said is that if you want a phone to work in both Canada AND Europe it'll have to be tri or quad band. The bands for Europe and North America do not overlap.

Timlin -

If you have a phone that has 900 and 1800 mHz bands in addition to the North American ones, it will work all over Europe. Having only one is somewhat of a crapshoot, because both bands are not implemented everywhere.

If &quot;chances are it will work in the UK&quot; doesn't convey enough certainty for you, check the manufacturer's specifications before you set out across the ocean.

&quot;Tri-band&quot; can mean a lot of things - some of them not as good as others.