7
You can also port your number to Google Voice for a one time fee of US$20. This will be signficantly cheaper than most other options, and you have the ability to port your number out of Google Voice for free. (If you brought your number into Google Voice, Google waives their US$3 fee.)
The benefit to this is that you can continue to receive text messages ...
7
Skype is really brilliant and I use it a lot to make video and/or voice calls. Sometimes just want to pick up the phone and call someone the "old" way. For that I resort to VOIP (Voice over IP).
While in the UK you could buy yourself a US VOIP number. It works over the Internet pretty much like Skype, only it is accessible through traditional phone ...
6
A few years ago, roaming within Europe was quite expensive. Since then, the European Commission have identified roaming as a notable impediment to the single market, so have been taking some strong steps to remove roaming as a problem.
As of the 1st of July 2014, the maximum allowed roaming rates for an EU phone in another EU country have dropped again, and ...
5
Actually, prepaid offers in France kind of suck compared to what I have seen in other countries. Your number remains active but your credit is only valid for a very short time (even with an international brand like Simyo, which offers completely different conditions elsewhere!) and calls can be expensive. For example, a €5 credit typically has to be used ...
4
Another variant using Skype is their SkypeNumber or online number service (formerly called “SkypeIn”). Unlike Skype's regular voice-over-IP service, there is a monthly fee but there are several advantages:
Overall costs are still reasonable compared to traditional long-distance/international calls
It's completely transparent to the caller, they just call ...
4
Do they have a computer? If so, Skype is pretty win-win.
(source)
They can install it (or a tech-savvy friend can), and then once it's set up, it's a case of:
open Skype
click name you want to call
start talking
and it's free from computer to computer, and very cheap to landlines.
4
I want to report that I have solved my issue. Here is what I did. The following information is correct as of March 2020, except the part about T-Mobile which was current in fall 2019.
First, some background.
I had previously validated myself with Capital One. So I had a working password, but I could not log in, because when I tried to log in, the Capital ...
4
I can understand your confusion, because I have been to the US once and felt the same, from the opposite side.
The pay as you go SIM plan you bought has
£20 Big Bundle: 400 minutes, 4000 texts and 2GB 3G or 4G data
Voicemail calls are chargeable on O2 pay as you go (ref) but they are covered from the very same top-up, no need to top-up again. No clue ...
3
The major carriers are:
Telia
Telenor
Tre (3)
Tele2/Comviq
While in Sweden you can get a prepaid SIM from any of them (except Tele2 but including Comviq) at for example Pressbyrån or 7-Eleven
but I'm afraid none of the carriers ship SIMs abroad. Registering a personnummer can be done later with the carrier for some extra benefits but is optional.
Topping ...
3
The easiest is this: dial91.com. I have been using this service to call my buddies in India for a few years now. The quality is amazing! It costs me about a cent a minute. The calls to UK are 2 cents a minute from the US. I find this service the easiest to use because, they offer me local US numbers that I can dial into, then speed dial from there (they ...
3
Verizon, and probably all the major carriers, offer prepaid sim only deals where $100 will keep your number for a year. At $8.50 or so a month it is probably cheaper any other plan you will find. As you only need to keep a few pennys worth of credit to keep the number, you might be able to resell, at a loss, some of the time by letting friends make calls or ...
3
You can port your number to Twilio, then pay $1/month to keep it active there. You can also get crafty with forwarding and voicemail and such.
3
I've got two extra lines, for visiting friends & family. They're used every few months. I keep them on T-Mobile Pay-As-You-Go, which is currently $3/month.
3
What is the "internet phone" that you already have in the US? Your question is very ambiguous, especially for someone like you who's not a newbie.
If you have a normal phone number, like a mobile phone, which is portable to any operator within the US (most mobile phone numbers are), what you could do is port it to a SIP VoIP provider like Anveo.com, where ...
3
I think an option for you might be a SIM-only plan. Normal postpaid plans in Singapore are unnecessarily expensive, because they need to finance your free phone upgrade every year or so. Unfortunately, there's not that many options for plans without phone. Here's what I found:
Starhub has a new SIM-only 4G plan which apparently starts at S$13.95 a month.
...
2
WiFi should not be a problem.
The only thing to watch for is that your phone needs to be GSM not CDMA, and needs to support at least the 900MHz and 1800MHz bands.
The phone's manufacturer should have a website listing compatibility across carriers around the world. Example: here is Apple's page listing iPhone compatibility with LTE bands around the world.
2
You could probably do a statistical analysis on this, working out that most calls will probably come from :
within Australia
India perhaps?
China
United Kingdom
other large populations of immigrants
Based on this, you could look at timezones and work out that perhaps a Monday morning when it's still the weekend in Perth, India, UK, USA etc might be ...
2
There are some MVNO operators (which rent the antennas from one of the four networks, i.e. Orange, SFR, Bouygues and Free) which have interesting offers, usually much cheaper than the big-name brands, with the inconvenience of having no access to wireless hotspots and sometimes lack of phone support (usually you have to use their forums to get support).
I ...
2
Not all VoIP providers are international, and you'll have to check with yours. I used Skype with US number from out of country without an issue, Google Voice is another viable option. Both allow redirecting to local numbers at pretty low costs almost anywhere in Europe.
2
I have done this for several years without any problems. There are a couple things that you need to do:
Research your Korean provider. (Let's take SKT as an example.)
Find out what frequencies / technologies they use. This info is all on the company's page on Wikipedia.
Make sure that you choose a phone that supports those frequencies / bands. You can find ...
2
German phone lines usually end with a TAE connector (Telekommunikation-Anschluss-Einheit):
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telekommunikations-Anschluss-Einheit
The main question would be - will you have internet connection via that landline.
If it is a pure landline, it will use the TAE connector, and there are adapters for RJ-45 jack to TAE connector. I do ...
2
You should check out the austrian contract comparison site durchblicker to find the best contract for your situation.
You can check mobile contracts for various situations and everything else including insurance.
I would strongly discourage you from using UPC for anything. The "best" is the former state service "A1". If you are only around vienna, it does ...
1
A caller who wants you to know who they are will identify themselves. A caller who doesn’t want you to know won’t. People who don’t want you to know who they are usually just want your best - and your best is your money.
1
I was able to get a SIM card from Telia without a personnummer, but I cannot call/text numbers outside of Sweden using it. I can receive international calls, I just can't make them. I don't know if this is a Telia restriction, or if this is a national policy that all the carriers must follow.
I can top it up online with no problems, since it's registered ...
1
You could buy and use a SIM card meant for a tourist.
This article at toomanyadapters.com reports that the author — presumably not a Swedish citizen, and thus without a Swedish personnumer - was able to buy a SIM card at a cellphone shop without presenting ID. The article also mentions obtaining a SIM card overseas (i.e., before traveling to Sweden), so you ...
1
First aboout UPC, it seems to be standard practice, for all their products, to use CRIF Gmbh to check your financial status (according to the terms of some random products I just checked).
But, nobody forces you to use UPC ... to start with, their mobile phone branch is just a reseller of "3" and has no own infrastructure. And UPC isn't known as the most ...
1
T-Mobile uses GSM, but South Korea uses CDMA. You might (?) be able to use the 4G LTE part, but this seems like a poor idea, because any areas in South Korea which don't have 4G LTE coverage will have zero coverage for your US-bought phone.
I think you're better off buying a cheap smartphone that works properly in the US.
Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible