Dear all,

My parents are flying to Malaga and will stay for 4 weeks. I heard that the best (cheapest) thing for phoning home (England) is to buy a SIM card in Spain (their phone is unlocked). Their Spanish is not good, so would you say that buying a SIM card in Spain is straightforward or too complicated?

Thank you

The cheapest way to phone UK is probably in an internet cafe or a CALLBOX where lots of phones are installed for phoning abroad and at quite cheap rates. Also the local phones will be cheaper than a sim card setup, instructions are usually in English also. They are simple to use, just put money in and dial dont forget the UK code and miss the 0 off the area code, you can add more coins as it uses it if you need to.

Hi.
We buy phone cards that you can use on a land line, the instructions are on the back and dead simple, it looks like you are in malaga so there will probably be a few good english speaking spanish around to help. We pay 12 euros and get 500 mins. Thats a euro direct card, it looks like a credit card and you can bet them from the places that sell newspapers.

good luck

love

mary x

Dear Mary,
Is this the card you mean? Sorry I am clueless, have never used a card like this before so can I ask some more questions...

So I think you get 500 mins if you call from a private land line but less minutes if you call from a public payphone or mobile. But does it matter whether the number you are calling in England is land or mobile? Also is there only one charge ie to the phonecard not two ie the card and the phone itself? And does the card tell you how many minutes you have left?

By the way, the cost of calling England from Spain using their Virgin mobile contract is 95p per min = nearly £60 per hour, what a joke!

Muchas gracias

If you fancy the SIM card option & your parents have not left yet
Have a look at
www.0044.co.uk/spain
You can get a Vodaphone Spanish SIM card from .
It costs £ 29.99 & you get quite a few free minutes with it
It is easy to top up at most places in Spain
They give good instructions if the phone being used needs unlocking
But my wife often uses the public phone boxes & you can have a decent lengh conversation for a euro or two

Chris

it is possible to buy a spanish SIM in the UK. This will give your
parents a spanish phone number and will allow them to call the
UK at the spanish providers normal international rate.
A quick google for "spain" and "sim" will give you some suppliers.
I've got one of these and have no problems, once I learned
how to change the default language on my phone back to english

Pete

My advice would be to use voipcheap. Its being discussed here at the moment. For the cost of €10 they could have 20 or more hours during the month they are here. You dont need an internet phone, just 2 home or mobile numbers.

yes, that's the card Mary means, we also use it all the time, we buy the 6€ ones, gives about 240 mins per card to landlines, no, there is no charge to the phone line, all covered by the card, and you can use it on a public telephone, but you get a few less minutes as the phone providers take a few minutes worth of the call, but it's not much. To a mobile, then you get considerably LESS minutes, but still a lot cheaper than using a public phone or another mobile. There are several different ones, but all work pretty well much the same, on the Euro direct card to dial 1700, then press 2 for english, type in the pin number, then the call number, remembering not to use the first 0 in the UK number, thus 0116 becomes 116.

You can buy Spanish sim cards on ebay.

Or you can buy a new Spanish phone over here for about 36 euros.

On the odd occasion that I need to call a UK landline number on my Spanish mobile I use the prefix 902902952. You then get an international call for the cost of a call to a Spanish 902 number at about €0,07 per minute. There are no up-front payments or contracts to sign.

Talking of phones....................................
Dont forget you can get your Spanish phone number transfered to a UK phone number, so friends can call you in Spain for the cost of a UK call 3 pence a minute.
I have one and the only time they have a problem is on Spanish holidays when every telefonica number is in use ;-) HERE

Care, with the phone cards. We brought ours for 6 euros but found out to our loss that it was only valid for 45 days, once you have activated it. So if you don't use it you lose it.

Never have a problem with ours running out, always use it well before the date.

It is much cheaper to buy the same card in Spain.