UK T-mobile prepaid vs Virgin

[Malkav]

go for the virgin pay as you go stays active longer....ahh go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on!

[psionandy]

If you are planning on using gprs/3g then go for t-mobile.. they will cap your data costs at only £1 per day (VOIP is banned however )

[telus_guy]

How does the data cap work though? Does it mean you can't use more then 1 pound per day, or your cost is no more then 1 pound per day no matter how much data you use?

TG

[psionandy]

How does the data cap work though? Does it mean you can't use more then 1 pound per day, or your cost is no more then 1 pound per day no matter how much data you use?

TG

If you use less than £1 of data.. you pay for it at the standard rate... If you use more than £1 of data.. then you only pay £1 for that day (midnight to midnight) and the fair use policy applies (which effectively limits you to a soft cap of 40mb a day


http://www.t-mobile.co.uk/eshop/pers.../payg-plans.do


If you're outside one of these deals the average price for data in the UK is about £2.50... so things get very expensive very quickly.

Web'n'walk day pass
Compatible handset required. £1 maximum daily charge applies to U-Fix, Mates Rates, Everyone and Text Appeal customers. Roaming charges apply. Charges of 0.73p per KB apply until £1 per day (midnight to midnight) is spent. If you have already spent £1 and you browse for a continuous period from before midnight to after midnight, all of that period will be charged at the new day's rate of 0.73p per KB. Not applicable to connection via circuit switch data (CSD). Subject to coverage. *To ensure a high quality of service for all our customers a fair use policy of 40MB (of data both sent and received in the UK) per day applies. We monitor use on a monthly basis. If, in our reasonable opinion, you regularly exceed 40MB per day, we may tell you to reduce your future use. If you again regularly exceed 40 MB per day, we may tell you that we are going to apply network protection controls, resulting in a reduced network speed for 14 days. If you exceed 40 MB per day for a third time, we may tell you that we are going to apply further network protection controls, resulting in a permanently reduced network speed. We do not permit use of this service to provide modem access for a computer or for peer to peer file sharing, internet phone calls or instant messaging. Roaming charges apply.

Orange do a similar service.. but you have to activate it on a daily basis before you use it.. alternatively Orange will sell you 4mb for £4 which doesn't expire at midnight)

[cnlc]

I'm flying to Uk and then going on to Czech Republic, Poland and Greece and then cruising back from Athens to London via Italy, France, Spain and Portugal.

Any reasonably priced prepaid that will allow me to receive free incoming in all or most of those countries and is relatively cheap to call back to Canada (where I am with Rogers).

Other option is just to get a calling card back to Canada if I can just get free incoming calls.

[mrcamp]

I believe United Mobile covers most iif not all of those countries. You may want to post or read similar responses in the European and international forum here.

http://www.prepaidgsm.net/forum/

International sims.

http://www.prepaidgsm.net/en/international.html

[mwalsh]

As mentioned previously, if you plan on going ANYWHERE other than the UK for any significant length of time then get a local SIM for the country you're visiting. You will pay through the nose for using your UK provider's SIM elsewhere in Europe. I seem to recall that Virgin was something like 55p a minute when I was in France. Plus there was no way to top up as I didn't have a UK credit card to register with Virgin and at the time they had recently pulled out of the French mobile market.

What I do these days is use a worldwide SIM. The Telestial Passport offers not great but not unreasonable rates for outgoing calls from most European countries, and free incoming calls in a great many of them.

[andy962]

I'm flying to Uk and then going on to Czech Republic, Poland and Greece and then cruising back from Athens to London via Italy, France, Spain and Portugal.

Any reasonably priced prepaid that will allow me to receive free incoming in all or most of those countries and is relatively cheap to call back to Canada (where I am with Rogers).

Other option is just to get a calling card back to Canada if I can just get free incoming calls.

For use from only the UK, the T-mobile bundle mentioned above

For Europe, as well as the global SIMs mentioned, also look at O2 UK's My Europe Extra. A £10 monthly fee gets free incoming calls in 31 other European countries, outgoing 25p/min. Then use separate callback for outgoing.

The callback firm ReturnCall has interesting rates (5p Canada), though I wouldn't rely on it as the only option. Voipcheap and Voipbuster have just introduced sms callback; VC rates from a UK/IoM mobile to 40 countries landlines are 8c/min. You might use a separate mobile Java client to send sms, such as mobisms, Voipbuster or Vyke; the last cheapest at 2c each