UK Cell Phone
 

I was wondering what would be a good option for a cellular phone in the UK....a rental? The company that I have does not have service in Europe. Any suggestions?
If I get a cell phone I can leave my laptop at home....

To clarify, I will only be in London, in case that makes a difference!

A service often recommended here is mobalrental.com. You actually purchase the phone (there are 2 for $49 and $99) and you own the phone and only pay a fee when you use the phone. You can then use the phone on future travels.

If you do a search here on cell phones in Europe or UK, you should find numerous threads on the subject. There are several options and you should be able to find information on those threads about all of the options.

Personally, I purchased a phone from Mobal last year when I traveled to London. I think it was a good investment - I'll be able to use it again this year when I go to Paris.

There are numerous offers of very cheap pay-as-you-go mobile (cell) phone in UK at the moment. In just about any supermarket or phone/electronic store, you can pick up a phone with sim card for as little as £20 ($40), sometimes just £10 ($20), provided you top up with a minimum of £10 or so. With this you get a UK number, free to receive calls and calling rate of around 25p a min inland.

25p/minute to call inland in the UK..too expensive for me.

T Mobile UK...15p/minute to call any landline in the UK.

Using a T Mobile UK sim card with an outfit called Yourcall world (www.yourcallworld.com) you can call foreign landline numbers for 3p/minute (and all USA and Canadian landlines and cell numbers for 3p/minute). If you have a UK mailing address you can go to www.tmobile.co.uk and they will send you for free 2 sim cards. Also it explain on this web site how you can purchase a bundle of 50 minutes of call time to the USA or Canada for £2...by my math that's 4p/minute.

Or if you already have an unlocked gsm phone with the 1800 frequency, you can go into an Orange store and get an Orange UK sim card for free under a plan they have which is named call abroad. The sim card itself is free but you are required to purchase a top up of £10 so in effect it's £10 with £10 of service. Unfortunately, those bums have just raised the price to 7p/minute to call the USA or Canada; what a bummer.

The competition is very very stiff right now in the UK among the cell phone companies. They are all literally giving away sim cards. Carphone warehouse has a sim card called Mobile World which also features 5p/minute calls to the USA and Canada but it has a limited validity and does not allow roaming (use outside the UK).

Both the Orange and T Mobile UK plans noted above feature free reception of calls while in the UK; they also have adopted the euro tariff rates which means you can use them throughout the eu to make calls within the eu for 34p/minute (not cheap but much much much cheaper than roaming with a US carrier in Europe or Mobal)...you will be receiving calls within the eu (although the calls you receive do not have to originate in the eu) for 19p/minute (and the eurotariff rates are expected to drop in the future)...and you can keep both cards active indefinitely by simply sending 1 text message every 6 months even if you're not in the UK...

Right now, those are the best offers.

BTW, in response to somebody else on a different board, I have found on ebay a merchant offering a T Mobile UK sim card for something like $2.49 with $3.99 for shipping so the total price would be $6.48.

T Mobile UK sim cards are sold without airtime so upon arrival in the UK you would have to go into most any chemist (pharmacy such as Boots or Superdrug), grocery chain (Tesco or Sainsbury) petrol (gas) station and top up for a minimum of £5...to top up they give you a card which looks like a credit card, the clerk swipes the card through their terminal you pay the 5 quid and voila you've topped up.

T Mobile UK within the UK operates on the 1800 frequency so even the USA tri band phones (850,900,1800) will work fine. If your cell carrier is either T Mobile USA or AT&T (AKA Cingular) you may already have such a tri band or even better a qud band phone. You would have to call them to get the phone unlocked or you might be due for an upgrade anyway so make sure you get at least a tri band phone or better yet a quad band phone or as noted above you can buy relatively cheap unlocked gsm phones on ebay.

One other nice thing about T Mobile UK, their charge of 15p/minute for calls within the UK apply both to landlines and to other mobile networks...Orange charges as much as 40p/minute for calls to other networks..also T Mobile UK has a couple of plans that will allow you to call others for free but you have to do a little homework on that on their web site.

This may not apply but the lodging I found in London supplies 2 free mobile phones and a laptop. You might want to check that possiblity...it sounds much easier.

Thank you everyone for all of the information! :)

Hi K,

>If I get a cell phone I can leave my laptop at home...

I have a picture of you walking around London with a laptop held to your ear.

((I))

The laptop comment was about teen communication...Sending messages by teen pages/chat is
cheaper than phone service.

Over the past week I've seen 3 phones - at different shops - for £5

Someone told me that there are cell phone stands at Heathrow airport, that sell prepaid phones/phone service for your visit to the UK. Does anyone know anything about that??

I have AT&T in the US. and a quad band phone, but I don't know if it is unlocked.?? We just figured we would take the laptop and the be able to downloand photos and send emails. Having a working phone would be nice but I was afraid it was going to be too expensive so I haven't explored using my cell phone during our visit to London.

I figured if I wanted to call home I would get an international phone card and use a pay phone? Is this a good idea or not?
Thanks!!!!

<<< Someone told me that there are cell phone stands at Heathrow airport, that sell prepaid phones/phone service for your visit to the UK. >>>

Probably - but you'd get a better deal by waiting until you are in London and buy one from Tesco / Asda / Superdrug and several other shops that sell phones as well as their main product

At worst pop into a Virgin shop - they invariably have a deal for £20 or less which includes air time