Victor88

Hi all,

Your help, guidance and advice is sought after!

I'll be moving to Charlotte (NC) shortly, and am trying to decide what the best cell phone deal for me is.

I don't particularly want a contract, looking for a PAYG deal or equivalent - but I'm not sure.

Although I do use Skype regularly, I need international minutes (to call back to the UK), and am not fussed about smart touch screen phones which do everything... a simple one that makes calls and texts/SMS messages is just fine.

My current provider in the UK is Virgin Media, and I get a pretty good 200 mins and 200 texts a month for £10 deal.

I also have an unlocked Sony handset... can I get just a SIM card for that?

Thanks all!

Victor

avanutria

We're going to go with T-Mobile PAYG; for $100 we can get 1,000 minutes and service for a year. We are not high users of phones and this seemed like the best solution for us. Handsets start from $20 on their website. I don't know what their international minutes are like though.

Is your Sony handset triband? If so then getting a SIM for it should work, but you'll have to get an adaptor for the charger and make sure the phone or the adaptor is dual voltage.

Mummy in the foothills

We do Tracfone, phones are cheap enough in Target (Ds is getting a samsung slider for Christmas this year) This one
It has double minutes for life we get great coverage. I usually put a one year card on them for the teens and it last them all year (surprisingly)
I text my Mom in UK and my sister in Spain all the time for only .3 minutes each text.

If you have an unlocked phone I wonder if using the sim card out of a tracfone would work, buy a cheap $19.99 phone and use the card maybe?

Victor88

Cool, Thanks for the advice... with Tracfone, are you able to make relatively cheap calls back to the UK?

Victor88

Yes I am sure my handset is Triband. The adaptor/charger is fine too, as I have used it on previous visits.

T-mobile seems a good option... is this 1000 minutes for the entire year, or per month?

Cheers!

avanutria

It's for the entire year, and they roll over if you want to add more time. The difference between UK and US PAYG as far as I can tell is that in the UK, as long as you have used your phone within some time period (6 months, etc) they will keep your line active...but with the US ones when you buy your minutes you're also buying a certain amount of time of line activity.

Here's the info about Tmobile prepaid: http://www.t-mobile.com/shop/plans/p...z_shop=Prepaid

Mummy in the foothills

I've never tried. I get 1¢ a minute calls from my land line to UK so use that.

sime303

This is what I found on Tracfone international calls.

http://www.auristechnology.com/tracfoneild/ild.asp

Duncan Roberts

Be aware that you are charged for everything. Calls are billed for any number you dial other than 911, you are billed for incoming and outgoing calls and text messages (you may or may not get free nights and weekends) and if you don't have roaming or long distance coverage then your minutes and texts may go quickly. So, when you make your choice keep those things in mind. 200 minutes sounds like a lot but that's less than 3.5 hours total talk time (incoming and outgoing) per month.

Bob

Needs to be Quad band these days, Tri might work in some places but not everywhere.

Bob

No it won't.

The phone has special firmware, it's how their minutes/units system work.

I've tried and also done a lot of googling.

BritishGuy36

Your cheapest/best method for calling the UK from your cellphone is to sign up for a free Google Voice account once you get here (you can buy an invite on ebay if you can't wait for the invite to come through). You call your own GV number and then once inside their network dial UK landlines for 2 cents (1.4p) per minute. Works like a charm and is far cheaper than any cell plan with direct-dial international calls.

You'd normally use up minutes dialing into the GV network - but most plans have a 'circle of friends'/'friends and family' thing where you can call a few nominated numbers for free as much as you want - so you just put your GV number as one of those, and then the calls don't eat into your minutes.

You just buy credit with GV for your international calls in $10 chunks.

Also if you use GV from the off you can just give people your GV number instead of your real number, then if you change phones it doesn't matter, you just forward the GV number to the new cellphone number. You've also then got access to far superior call management functions than are available on your cellphone, like routing different folks to different numbers (or straight to answerphone), or easily blocking numbers from calling you altogether.

www.google.com/voice

sime303

I didn't sign up for it but was just wondering if they planned on charging for this in the future? If they don't then it sounds like a cool idea for mobiles, not so much for my home phone as I already get that for 2c a minute through my phone company.

BritishGuy36

I'd get signed up for an invite just in case, they take a while to come through.

They say it will always be free....I think that it will be but they must have a way of making cash out of it. They already partner with Verizon for phones (android etc) so I reckon they will launch a full Google phone service on Verizon's backbone before too long and split the profits.