Cell phone while in London

Old Sep 17th, 2008, 10:39 AM
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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?
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Old Sep 17th, 2008, 10:53 AM
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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?
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Old Sep 17th, 2008, 11:13 AM
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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.
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Old Sep 17th, 2008, 12:12 PM
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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.
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Old Sep 17th, 2008, 03:17 PM
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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.
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Old Sep 17th, 2008, 05:46 PM
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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
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Old Sep 17th, 2008, 06:14 PM
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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?
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Old Sep 17th, 2008, 06:15 PM
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And, of course, you SAID that in your follow up posting: as an emergency contact device. Duh.
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Old Sep 17th, 2008, 08:28 PM
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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.
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Old Sep 18th, 2008, 07:42 AM
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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?
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Old Sep 18th, 2008, 07:47 AM
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wonder how folks managed to have relaxed holiday before the net?

Maybe we all obsessed less?
 
Old Sep 18th, 2008, 10:19 AM
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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&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 £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 £10 worth of calling credit. Or they can sell you a cheap gsm phone as noted for as little as £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&T customer although you can reduce that to the same rates as T Mobile by paying $5.99/month and with the UK£ 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&T unless you're completely sure you only want to make a call or two.
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Old Sep 18th, 2008, 10:21 AM
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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.
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Old Sep 18th, 2008, 01:07 PM
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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 £10 and not worry about it.
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Old Sep 18th, 2008, 06:45 PM
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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!
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Old Sep 19th, 2008, 05:36 PM
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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.
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Old Sep 19th, 2008, 06:47 PM
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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.
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Old Sep 19th, 2008, 07:35 PM
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xyz: A hint for posting - If you click on "preview my reply" you can see everything as it will appear in the final. If there are typos or anything else you want to change, click on "edit" and it brings back the text box where you can keep typing/editing.
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Old Sep 19th, 2008, 08:00 PM
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I have an Orange "Pay as You Go" 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.
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Old Sep 19th, 2008, 10:36 PM
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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!
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