verizon phone in England

Got a laptop/netbook/other wifi enabled device? Skype.

My husband just got back from a week in London. He's got an iPhone 4 and we elected to get him a loaner from Verizon so he could call home. We could not have been more pleased with the service! I normally loathe dealing with phone companies (long hold times, clueless reps, conflicting info, etc.) but that was NOT the case this time. The loaner device was a pristine Blackberry. It was $19.99. The instructions are SIMPLE and a rep walks you through the process, includiing telling you how to dial numbers in the UK and Europe. They will pro-rate service charges for the number of days you are there. And we got a package that cost hubby $.99 per minute to call home, which is really not bad. They were totally sympathetic with our wanting the roaming turned OFF, and showed us how. Finally, when he got back, they gave us instructions for getting the pictures he took off the phone, then walked us through switching back to his iPhone. All in all a great service at an excellent price, and IMHO, very worthwhile. We're going to get the rental again when we go back this April.

Thanks Kira - very helpful!! And Nigel, we will bring our lap top and have skype...our main use will be letting our friends know when to pick us up after we buy our train tickets at the station...is there free wifi there?

Gerrie, for your purposes, I wouldn't rely on firing up your netbook, finding a wifi connection, and then seeing if you could call over Skype. Too many chances for it not working correctly and trying to talk over a computer in a busy train station would be a pain in my opinion. I'd get the Verizon loaner phone simply to have as a backup. Have you thought about getting a prepaid calling card and using a pay phone. Pay phones are somewhat harder to find in this cell phone age, but you should be able to find one at a train station. You can get a calling card in the U.S. (AT&T sells them). The rates aren't great, but for your uses, who cares? You won't be making long calls. Once you're in the U.K. you can buy the cards at what we'd call convenience stores.

We are in the midst of planning our trip too, so I can't give you any first-hand experience, but I am looking at this cell phone rental program with TEP wireless (tepwireless.com). It seems to get good reviews. I agree that Skype is how we plan to call home, but we are in a situation that we need to have a phone number that will allow family to reach us in case of emergency. This seems like a good solution.

Henry, it doesn't look like TEP gives you a U.S. number that forwards to the U.K. number they issue. Consequently, your family will need to know how to make an international call (it isn't that difficult), but you might want to figure out the cheapest way to do that because if they call from a home phone or even a cell phone, it could cost a bunch. Of course, in a true emergency, concern about cost is secondary. If one's travel takes them to the U.K., the cheapest route to go for a means to stay connected is to buy a local prepaid phone. It is cheaper than renting a phone and it is likely cheaper than the travel phone providers, such as TEP. Using some other method has advantages, though. For example, many of the travel phone companies give you two numbers: one is the foreign number (most always in the U.K.) and the other is a U.S.-based number that forwards to the foreign number. This makes it easy for folks back home to reach you by simply calling the U.S. number. You will, however, pay for what the company charges for an international call. I'm coming around to the position that if you have a way to use your U.S. phone number overseas, and you don't expect to make or receive many calls (or have any data use), then it makes the most sense to stick with your U.S. phone service. I'd suggest forwarding all calls directly to voicemail and telling everyone to text you if they need you. That keeps your costs down. For any calls you need to make, either keep it real short, or get a prepaid phone card and find a pay phone or use something like Skype.

More . . . . In the U.S., this means that if you have contract service through T-Mobile, AT&T, or Verizon, you can use your number. For T-Mobile and AT&T, you'll have to make sure your phone has the radio frequencies to work overseas. If not, you can buy a phone once you get there or buy a used or cheap one off ebay or through some company such as Tiger Direct. For Verizon, this means you need to use their loaner phone program. I do this myself as well as using a local SIM. One is for local calls and data and one is for those in the U.S. to contact me. It has worked pretty well so far.

Paul - Verizon just switched my husband's service to the loaner phone. So he had the same (US) number while in the UK. It was pretty magical - worked awesomely. And was well worth the twenty bucks for the loaner phone.

I used a Verizon loaner phone myself last year when I went to Italy and England. It was great having my own phone number and texting was much cheaper than phone calls. Make sure you buy the International calling plan for something like $4.99 for a month (they'll prorate it if your trip is less than a month) so your call and text rate will be cheaper. Just make sure you warn everybody not to call or text you as you will be out of the country! That's the one disadvantage of having your own phone number I guess. If you decide to do this, make sure you charge the loaner as soon as youget it to make sure the charger works. Mine didn't but fortunately my travel buddy had the same loaner phone type so I used hers. We ran into a couple that couldn't use theirs because they didn't even bother to charge it till they got to Italy.

Thank you so much everyone...I am off to Verizon today! (I love this message board on Rick Steves site! Everyone has been so helpful!)