What do people use to call the UK especially mobiles? I use phone cards at the moment (Diamond Europe is good) but they are useless for mobiles. You get about 15 mins for a $5 card. I know about the $39.99 a month for unlimited calls with my phone company but that seems a bit pricey.

I use 1010987. 53c connect, and 3c/minute thereafter, but that is to landlines. You pay a tad more if calling a mobile.

1010987.com has all the rates.

Walgreens International calling card. $10.00 for 100 minutes to the UK. (No connection fee) Not sure what the rate to a UK mobile would be though.

I use OneSuite to call my daughter's mobile. www.onesuite.com Its 17cents a minute if you can find a local access number to connect to, otherwise its a bit more expensive.

I use MCI at my house and you get a free calling card. Every call to the UK is 5.5c whether from home or calling card. I program the calling card details into my verizon cell phone and all international calls I make that way.

The surcharge to call a UK cell phone is at the other end that I think all US carriers pass onto you (15c-20c per minute extra). Calls in the UK to UK cell phone calls are about the same prices.

I use tel3 - it used to be 9 cents a minute to UK mobiles but it went up recently to 20.3 cents a minute unfortunately. Still, there's no connection fee (unless you're using a payphone) so it still works out not being too bad I suppose (calls to regular UK phones are 5 cents a minute, but for those calls I use lingo for unlimited calls for $19.99 a month - they charge 28 cents a minute to UK mobiles with this service).

So you use Lingo as your main telephone service provider? Does it cause problems with your internet use? How long have you used this?

We still have a basic service on a regular landline so I can still use the calling card if there are internet problems. We've had it for about 3 months now and it seems to be ok but not perfect (had to reset it a couple of times, sometimes have to dial the number twice to get through etc.) but as we have the landline and mobile phones we always have alternatives. I spent about 3 hours on the phone yesterday to various people in the UK and didn't have problems and my fiancee was using the internet at the same time with no problems. She uses it a lot for work too a couple of days a week when she works from home so she'll be connected to her office network while on the phone without a problem (most of the time anyway).

I don't think I'd trust it for everything, so none of our friends or family even have that number to call us on. It's really just used for making calls in our household.

I use OneSuite myself and there's no connection fee for using their services.



NC Penguin

That's right and calling UK landlines is 2 cents a minute.

I use Purple myself. No connection or maintenance fees, and even with their 20% service fee, that still amounts to less than 2 cents per minute.

Of course, calls to a UK mobile are charged at a higher rate.

http://britishexpats.com/forum/showt...ighlight=lingo
http://britishexpats.com/forum/showt...ighlight=lingo
http://britishexpats.com/forum/showt...ighlight=lingo

VIP Communications are 3c/min to the UK. No fees, just keep your account topped up. Mobiles are 15c/min I think but you can check it out.

Thanks. Sounds like Lingo is more hassle than it's worth.

I use it as our only phone line. It's great! We now have a $30 phone bill off one company instead of a $150 one off two! I reboot the modem, ATA and router every Sunday morning -- not a big hassle as I used to do it when we just had the modem and router anyway.