Hi guys

Can't find a thread on this... Hope you can help. We will be moving to Sydney at the end of May. For the first few months we will be in student accomodation with no landline phone and no Internet access for webcamming.

Can anyone recommend a mobile phone company who would do a deal that included calls to UK for a reasonable monthly cost? How much for a monthly contract? And can you include unlimited texts to UK also?

Thanks so much. The thought of very limited communication for our first few months is scaring me so am hoping to get reassurance fromthose of you out there already.

Anyone managed to get a good deal?

Mary

Some ideas - go to the newsagent and buy one of those telephone cards. Get one with a local access number. It'll then cost you a flat fee of 50 cents from a payphone to call the number - no time limit and then a few cents a minute from the phone card. Some cards have conditions such as dialing or disconnection fees, time limits etc so have a look.

Another idea if you have your own computer is to buy one of those mobile broadband dongles. Virgin do them.

The mobile widgets things are quite common here now - Telstra and Optus do them too, Id say thats the way to go, coupled with one of the cards for phone calls.

Lebara mobile. We had an old mobile phone so bought the simcard and put it in there and use it purely for calling home. Check their website for the details but they're very reasonable and we've been using them since we arrived at the beginning of last month. We'd issues with the 'Aussie' phonecard, we called using it from the temporary accommodation and one call cost us $25 despite it only meant to be the cost of a local call, so be careful with phonecards!

http://www.lebara-mobile.com.au/en/

There's also a UK lebara, I ordered one for my Dad back in the UK and hopefully it'll be just as good as the Aussie version....

The Super Buzz Card from Aus Post is good