International phone calling

Are you traveling to Scotland and need to be able to call home often? I also have ATT, I usually travel to Europe 1-2 times a year for pleasure. I don't use my phone to make calls back to the US so I just keep my regular service and pay the per minute and per text rate. I do make a few short calls to travel mates if necessary to meet up with them, we tend to text back and forth mostly but still don't do that a whole lot. Not enough to justify getting a plan, I use iMessage on wifi to keep in touch with my daughter and anyone else back home I want to say hi too.
ATT does have plans you can get for a trip if you plan on making many calls. You'd have to check the international section on their website to see which works for you.
There is also the option of buying a prepaid international SIM to put in an unlocked phone

Are you asking about making to calls from USA to Scotland with an AT&T cellphone?

If so AT&T allows "international long distance". I don't know what the rates are, but they offer two tiers, one is a pay-per-minute rate and the other is $5/month and a lower per-minute rate. Call 611 and ask about international long distance rates to the UK.

Or are you interested in calling to the USA while traveling in Scotland using your AT&T cellphone?

Calling to the USA or receiving calls from anywhere while abroad is "roaming". Roaming is $1.50/minute for making or receiving calls while in the UK. This applies whether you're calling to the USA or calling a UK phone number.

Other "Roaming" details:
Either way, to make calls while in the UK you need a Europe compatible phone. This is alternately called a "world phone" or a "quad-band GSM phone." They mean the same thing. Additionally some phones (not all) will require you to type your USA phone numbers with the country code while you're abroad. At home you might call (206) 555-1212, so in the UK you'll type +12065551212. The instructions to dial a "+" is different on every phone.

Let us know if this helps!

I have checked with ATT and it seems so expensive. I am travelling to scotland for 10 days and want to be able to call home to US for about 20 mins daily and also some texting. We do not have msart phones and dont have data. I do not know if wifi will be available but am trying to find out. I have found something about uber?? like a conference call but that requires the person in scotland to have a local phone to dial into uber?? not exactly sure how this works or if it is the best option but still checking. It seems the cheapest options I have found require wifi or internet. is it possible to buy a local temporary phone for a reasonable cost?

I gave up calling home years ago. It seems that with the time difference, everyone I would call in the states was either sleeping or at work when I had time to call them. I've found that email works best. I write when it is convenient for me, they read when it is convenient for them. I also post a detailed account of my travels on my website for family and anyone else interested to read.

good to hear from you Lee. you are probably correct. However, I am not quite ready to give up on calling just yet. Hoping someone knows some better choices for staying connected.

I now use two calling options, one for the country I'm in and one for calling home.

For calling locally, I buy a cheap phone and SIM card in the country I'm visiting. There are plenty of options that include minutes for around 25 euro (phone, SIM, ten euro worth of minutes). They charge around 8 euro cents a minute. This is crazy cheap compared to any offer you will get from AT&T.

For calling home, I use an iPod touch. I set it up to call land lines back home for about 2 cents a minute - again way cheaper than you will get from AT&T. It doesn't have to be an iPod, anything that receives WiFi will work.

If I pulled it all into a smart phone, I'd do it with an unlocked (rather than on contract) smart phone, buy a SIM card locally, and minimize my data usage by taking advantage of WiFi whenever possible.

The ipod seems good if wifi is available. I'm not sure if it is so I'm still looking for calling options that dont require internet. Hopefully more folks will continue to post suggestions.. thanks for the help

If you sign up for AT&Ts $30 passport you can text and send photo messages as much as you want. I think that's a pretty good deal and easy way to stay in touch too.

Did you make sure your phone is one of the "quad-band" ones that are compatible with the cell towers over there?

The only cheaper way that I know is to switch your phone to T-Mobile. They don't have nearly the service area coverage at home in the USA as AT&T or Verizon, but what they do offer is unlimited texting, 3G (slow) data and 20cent calling while traveling abroad.

I am checking on T mobile. That is the cell carrier my husband uses and it might be cheapest to add a phone to his plan for a month for travel if we can use it for just 1 month

If you really want to be able to make calls at any time (not just from your hotel room where you'll likely have Wi-Fi), then you'll need a cell phone, either from the US or from the UK.

If you want to talk for 20 minutes at a time every day, using your US AT&T phone will be very expensive (even with one of their international plans that will lower the per minute cost somewhat). Using T-Mobile, if you have a postpaid Simple Choice plan, you will pay $0.20 per minute (so 20 minutes is $4). If you have any other kind of T-Mobile plan, it's $1.50 per minute - make sure you know your husband's plan before assuming it will save money. If you have a T-Mobile phone that does Wi-Fi calling, calls from the UK back to the US will be free while you're on Wi-Fi. Only some phone models can do Wi-Fi calling; again, you have to check yours.

Buying a UK cell phone is going to be a much better deal (except they say "mobile," not "cell"). You can get a basic "dumbphone" for about £20, then charge it with credit. As said above, it can be about £0.06 or so per minute to call the US. You can get phones at stores run by specific carriers (like Vodafone or O2), or you can go to a store like Carphone Warehouse that will sell you phones from different carriers (the way Best Buy does in the US). When choosing the phone and plan, make it clear that your main use will be calling the US, so they can get you the best deal; as in the US, the deals change all the time.

If you don't need to be able to make a call from any place, you can also get local calling cards. You dial an access number, then the PIN on the back of the card, then the number your want in the US. They can be very cheap, but you need to be at a land line or pay phone to use them. Not only are pay phones getting scarce, but the cards have bad rates from pay phones in the UK, so as a practical matter, you need to use them from your hotel room; at that point, you could just use Skype for even less.

You can also make cheap calls from call centers. These are usually geared to immigrants calling their home countries, and have lots of computers as well as telephones. I'm not sure how prevalent they are in Scotland; a city like Edinburgh or Glasgow will have them, but I don't know about smaller places.

If you will be in small towns as opposed to cities, a mobile phone bought in the UK will really be your best bet. Plus, you can keep it for future trips.

Have you seen Rick's tips on this subject? They are a pretty good introduction to your options: https://www.ricksteves.com/travel-tips/phones-tech

PS: Lee's tip is important. Both you and the people in the US have to make sure that everyone understands the time difference, so no one is awakened unnecessarily, and so that you aren't trying to reach people when they're at work. They also also have to understand that if they call you while you're in a museum or such, you may not answer (so they don't panic if you don't pick up!).

I have ATT and every year prior to my trip I call them and set up my int'l calling plan, includes 50 texts and some internet in case I need it while not using the free Wi-Fi somewhere. Every year the plans are structured differently but I consider it a good value because I do call home every few days--solo traveller, elderly parents--and I don't bring a laptop so my phone is my computer. I want to say the plan was around $60 last May, with whatever calls tacked on, so perhaps $100 total. I do not want to bother getting a SIM card or other phone in Europe and not being in contact is not an option.

Call ATT and they will help you decide what plan works best for your anticipated needs, they've been great for me on my last 5 trips to Europe.

WiFi is everywhere in Europe, including restaurants, bars, hotels and other public spaces. It's readily available even in small towns. If nothing else, every McDonald's and Starbucks has WiFi, you have to ask for the password at the counter.

I was in a tiny town in Spain looking for WiFi. A place I knew would have WiFi was closed for Siesta; I had the signal but not their password. I went into a very old, very small bar a few doors down and asked if they knew the password, instead they gave me the password for their own WiFi.

For phone calls from public places I packed a headset with a microphone to help reduce background noise. The sound was as clear as any cell phone and no one complained they couldn't hear me.

I think Michael means never a problem.

Yes, when I said I set up my iPod, I forgot to say I set it up with Skype. You can set it up to call other computers equipped with Skype or to call phone numbers. I chose to set it up for land lines. It costs less than 3 cents a minute. I put a $20 deposit on it and hadn't used it up by the end of my month-long trip. Another bonus is you don't have to dial a string of numbers to get an international line, then USA, then the ten digit number and area code. You call as if you are calling from the US, so just the normal phone number.

The sound quality is great. As good or better than a good cell connection.