Sim card experts - I need your advice
 

All the info out there on international sim cards is enough to make your head explode - at least mine. So if I give you my specific needs could someone please give me some advice.

First, I do have an unlocked quad band phone. If I get a card with a UK number my family in the US can call it for pennies. If it has a phone number from somewhere like Latvia it costs a fortune. So I'm looking for a card with a western European, preferably UK number. I'll be in the UK and Italy on my upcoming trip. Free incoming calls would be good. But I'll also need to make and receive calls from my daughter who lives in the UK this year and so has a UK mobile phone. And - half the trip I'll be in Italy but would still like to be able to make and receive calls as cheaply as possible to the UK mobile.

I've researched several cards most of them look like the cost to call a UK mobile is around a dollar a minute which could add up. I don't care how cheap it is to call the US since I mostly care about them being able to call me. But I do want to be able to call that UK mobile of my daughters without it costing a fortune.

If I wait till I get to England and buy a cheap sim card how much will it cost to use it in Italy? I can't seem to find that info on any of the websites on prepaidgsm.

Thanks

One of the really neat things the eu has done is to slash roaming rates within the eu......calls within the eu are relatively cheap once you leave the home country of the sim card so an English sim card would be very good for you...most are available for free a price you can't beat....since your daughter has a UK mobile and the eu roaming rates are relatively the same, your best bet might be the same company as your daughter to keep calls between your daughter and you while in the UK as cheap as possible (most UK mobiles charge a higher rate to call a different mobile network although some don't you can check that on the various web sites)....you can also see the roaming rates on the various web sites...receiving calls, as I remember, while in Italy would be something like 14p/minute (don't hold me to the exact figure...your daughter would pay the going rate to call your mobile number whatever it is...calls back to the UK from Italy are something like 34p/minute; don't remember what the surcharge is to a mobile but you can check it on the various web sites. As calls back to the USA are not a consideration, that would seem the best direction to go i.e. an English PAYG sim card probably on the same network as your daughter.

I went to carphone warehouse in Glasgow. They were great. The woman asked me what calls I would be making since most of my longer calls would be to the US, I got a plan that was 7p a min. to US and 21p to UK but they would probaby offer you a different plan. I only used UK to make reservations. It cost me 10 pounds for the sim card with the pay as you go plan. I didn't even have to refill it. If your daughters plan is real cheap. She can call you since you do not pay for incoming calls in the UK. Carphone warehouses are ubiquitous in UK and they are sooo helpful I had no idea what I was doing.

milliebest...don't be angry at me...I'm not trying to put down what you said but here goes anyway....the OP has the most important part covered....he or she has the gsm phone...not that carphone warehouse is a horrible suggestion but really no need....just about all the major UK operators will deliver FREE sim cards to any UK address so before leaving home he or she after choosing the company can go to the web site and arrange to have free sim cards delivered to his or her hotel (or his daughter's address)...or maybe he can do what happened to me...I was walking down Oxford Street and there was somebody at a T Mobile store handing out FREE sim cards...they need to be topped up (except vodafone which comes or has come in the past with £1 of credit)....or when you get off the Gatwick train at Victoria or eurostar at St. Pancras you will find a large display where they hand out free lebarra cards (lebarra is very good BTW for calls to other mobile networks)...as far as 7p to the USA, that's an okay price but with T Mobile UK and Orange UK and 3 UK, you can get a deal with a firm called yourcallworld which enables you to call the USA and just about every other landline in the world for 3p/minute....lebarra is 4p/minute to the USA, vodafone UK and T Mobile UK (without ycw) have plans for 5p to the USA and Orange UK has a plan for 6p to the USA; not that there's that big a difference but the CW clerk did not have all the facts (not that he was trying to rip you off or anything like that....like I say, if you need a cheap phone to go along with the sim card, carphone warehouse is fine).

One of the big advantages, as I tell people all the time, of British sim cards besides the low price is you can easily do all the research on line and when you get the sim card set it up easily as believe it or not in Great Britain, they talk English which, of course, is a language most Americans and Canadians can understand pretty well.

JMHO on this one!

Thanks for the info. lebarra looks good. I'll be coming from Heathrow to Victoria Station so hopefully I'll find the display. Is there a store or something in or near Victoria if I need to find an actual store?

Also, are incoming calls free? I couldn't find any mention on most of the sites. The OrangeUK site mentioned an "answer phone charge" of 12-20p/min (depending on the plan). But lebarra , T-mobile, etc don't mention anything about incoming calls.

Thanks again

Orange answert phone is their voicemail system...that is the charge to call in to retrieve your messages...all UK providers feature free reception of calls while in the UK and basically have the same roaming rates as mandated by the eu....the lebarra people are generally near where the Gatwick Express comes into Victoria...you shouldn't have any trouble finding them although most phone shops do not handle lebarra as it is an MVNO i.e. they don't have their own towers but piggy back I believe on O2 which doesn't matter to you!

Thanks xyz - that helps. I'll probably go with lebarra. My daughter has T-Mobile but it looks like either way it will cost 10p/min to call her phone. And they both look like they are about 4-5p/min to call the US so I can call my husband if I need to. Couldn't find roaming charges on the TMobile site - as I said I'm going to Italy after the UK so will still need to call her mobile and to receive calls from the US occasionally. It looks like it will be reasonably cheap for the relatively small amount of usage I'll need. Thanks again

Yes I do think all in all it's the best solution but just bear this in mind. In order to make up for the streams of lost revenue because of the eu roaming regulations forced on them, most of the British telcoms have raised their roaming rates for out of eu calls to asininely high heights. Thus you will pay an arm and a leg, well probably just an arm, to call the USA from Italy with any of the British cards (although calls to the USA are dirt cheap if you know what you're doing on most British sims while in Britain). Of course there's nothing to keep you from calling somebody in the USA, paying the high first minute rate and asking them to call you back. Another solution to this problem in Italy is to get a calling card from a tabachi with a local Italian triggering number so you pay the minute rate for an eu roaming call and next to nothing for the call to the USA. The con is that even if the call to the USA is not completed, yhou pay for the triggering call (34p). An Italian sim will help some. Italian sims are fairly cheap (of course not as cheap as the British ones but then again nothing beats free, it only ties) and calls to the USA on an Italian sim while not exactly cheap are cheaper than calls to the USA on a British sim when roaming in Italy, far cheaper. Always bear in mind too that all calls to the USA are considered landline calls even if they go to a USA cell number, a small break for USA phone idiosynchrosies although you pay to receive calls on many USA cell phone plans (or have almost unlimited minutes to receive like I do).

Have a great trip and good luck.

I won't really need to make calls back to the US from Italy - I can skype, but nice to remember that little trick about calling them for a minute and having them call you back. We used to do things like that when I was a kid calling my parents collect. So am I correct that it's not free to receive calls on the UK sim when in Italy? But it's reasonably cheap? I used to always just buy a local sim for each country but at 20€ a pop it adds up and they are useless for the next trip which is usually more than 6 months for me. So I got a United-mobile sim which I loved till they went out of business. I was researching a reasonable replacement for it when you aimed me towards the UK sim cards, and for this trip at least that is clearly the way to go.

As I said, it's somewhere above, one of the really decent things the eu has done is force the telcoms within the eu to start winding down roaming rates while within the eu. Of course, it is part of the ultimate goal of some eu bureaucrats that eventually the nations in the eu will be like states in the USA. That's probably a long way off if it ever will happen but ultimately they would like to see roaming on mobiles in the eu to be like roaming in the USA.

Having said that it's being done piecemeal and right now, all the UK telcoms charge 14p/minute to receive calls while in the eu (the call need not originate in the eu!) so that's what you will pay, 14p/minute. There are plans to cut that even further with various telcoms but they're not really good deals in your case or for most tourists. So as of now, that's what you'll pay i.e. 14p/minute. I think, also, the eu requires these calls to be timed to the second after the first minute but wouldn't stake my reputation, however small it is, on that. So people calling you will pay whatever their carrier charges for a call to a UK mobile and you pay the 14p....

The other good news, is that British sim cards remain active for at least 180 days (a full year with orange) and all you have to do to keep them active is not to top up but just send one text message. As they allow roaming in the USA, you can send a text to your own phone every 5 months or so and keep the sim indefinitely!