Cell phones in London

The cheapest way is to go to a pay phone and use cash to call home or better still use a friends land line and pay for the call.

When it comes to cell phones you can go into any branch of Tesco or Asda supermarkets and buy a 'pay as you go' super cheap phone for about GBP15.00 ( USD30.00 ).

From there on in you buy time on the phone and make your stateside calls - VERY expensive no matter which service provider you use.

The big advantage is your family can call you.

Your best bet is to use the phones in your students union and leave your cell phone for incoming calls.

Any newsagent will have phone cards you can use on a landline. Alternatively if you have access to high-speed internet, you can set up a Skype account and use that. We use Skype to call my wife's parents home all the time and it's very cheap, about 2.5 cents a minute from the USA to Japan.

Amanda,

In your situation, I'd buy a PAYG phone from one of the UK providers for local calls and keeping in touch with friends. The networks are Vodafone, O2, T-Mobile, Orange, Telefonica and Teleware.

To keep in touch with family back home, use a Long Distance calling card or Skype as the others have suggested.

Good luck!

Amanda,

The easiest thing to do, as others suggest, is buy a pay-as-you-go phone in the UK. Use it for calling in and around the UK. Your amily can call you on it cheaper than you can call them.

For calling home, Skype is the way to go. Rates are quite cheap (and the account is free to set up.) As an aside (forgive me if you are already familiar with Skype) -- dont know if youre taking a laptop or not but if you have one with a camera, and your family has a Skype account, computer and webcam, you can actually chat via video link over the Internet for free.

Anyone have info on prices for a PAYG cell phone purchase in London? Wife and I have T-Mobile and we're set up to use them in London, but at 99 cents a minute for each of us, a one minute call to each other will cost $1.98. Granted we won't be calling each other very often as we'll be together most of the time, but when she wants to roam all over Harrod's and I would prefer roam the streets in South Kensington, we'll have to meet up via cell phone I suppose.

Amanda - just in case you haven't gotten the message yet - Skype! My daughter was in France this past school year. She did buy a cell phone upon landing but this was mainly to contact other (French) students, and it was fairly expensive - I believe it was 50 Euro cents/minute. Calling home with Skype is free. Both you and your parents download it on your computers - I assume you are taking a laptop with you. We found the time difference to be a real advantage. By the time my daughter was ready to call it a night it was late afternoon/early evening for us so she could reach us fairly easily. She also purchased Skype out credit which allowed her to call our home phone for about 2 Euro cents/minute. This way we were not tied to the computer waiting for her call. Your parents will be also be able to purchase Skype Out credit and call your cell phone for a higher fee - I think it cost 20 cents/minute. But believe it or not, we usually talked via Skype with both of us on computers. We got cameras for our computers as well and it was great to see her face too.