cheap calls to mobiles

[antibt]

Through Telediscount it costs only 10p/pm.

[MegaTsunami]

so does www.call18866.com

[BexTech]

And only 2p/min at weekends

[antibt]

But you need a credit card and they can help themselves and you will never be able to cancel the card D/D.

[squidgy]

But you need a credit card and they can help themselves and you will never be able to cancel the card D/D.

Hmm - you're not very trusting are you? Is the company based in the UK? If it comes to it - you could always refuse to pay the credit card bill. I assume you're not paying your credit card bill by continuous authority transaction on another credit card.

[antibt]

Hi, people react according to their past experience.I was one of those unfortunates when I was with localtel.

[nomadicjon77]

Try www.pocketdialuk.com - No credit cards - reliable services as regulated by ICSTIS (Independent Committee for the Supervision of
Standards of Telephone Information Services). You can also call abroad from a mobile for as little as 1p/min with them!

[squidgy]

Here's a better idea. If you're at home, then use your mobile to send a text message telling your friend to go find a payphone, and call your fixed phone number, but then hang up straight away after the first ring so they get their money back. You then get the payphone's number by dialling 1471, then call it back.

Chances are you'll be able to do that for a lot less than 2p per minute. I suggest Tiscali or Equitalk - £4.99 per month gets you unlimited evening and weekend calls to UK geographic numbers, including payphones. Orange Text Saver gets you up to five texts to UK mobiles every day for a year, for £19.99

[squidgy]

but then hang up straight away after the first ring so they get their money back

Oh by the way - make sure that you don't have BT Answer 1571 on your line. Or if you do - then activate Call Waiting as well. There's always a chance that you'll be on another call when your mate calls from the payphone - and if you have 1571 but not call waiting, then he won't have a chance to hang up before losing his 20p. He might be quite miffed about traipsing out in the rain to talk to you if this happens too frequently, which means you're stuck with mobile termination rates again.

[silver]

assuming your friend has an inet connection (and you do also) then use an IP phone (something like netmeeting) - then the cost of the call is 'free' (well it's the same as your i'net connection cost).

There's some neat ones abt and the voice quality is as good or perhaps a little better than the phone (ok - there's generally a slight delay but you forget abt it once you are used to it).

Sil

[squidgy]

assuming your friend has an inet connection (and you do also) then use an IP phone (something like netmeeting) - then the cost of the call is 'free' (well it's the same as your i'net connection cost).

Good point - but so far, there's only one person I can think of who has fixed broadband internet access and a mobile phone but no fixed phone.

So I'm not sure how you hook it up with someone who has neither fixed phone nor fixed broadband at home - or who's away from home. I guess you could send them a text telling them to visit a cybercafe, or local library computer facility - and include your IP address or dynamic host name in the text message.

Perhaps that's a better way of doing it between 8am and 6pm Monday to Friday, when you don't get unmetered calls to public payphones - but when public libraries are also more likely to be open. Thanks for the suggestion silv.

[squidgy]

Actually silv's suggestion has given me an idea.

If you take your phone abroad - you normally have to pay to answer calls. But do you have to pay anything to receive text messages?

You see - I'm wondering if it's cheap and practical to use mobile phone text messages to set up cybercafe visits for travellers.

I bet people do this all the time and I've only just cottoned on to it.

[thefirs]

If you take your phone abroad - you normally have to pay to answer calls. But do you have to pay anything to receive text messages?

No it's free on the networks I use.

[squidgy]

I suspect that if you really want to make calls to mobiles as cheaply as possible, the best way is to get a mobile phone, unlock it, and get a pay as you go sim for each network. When you want to call a phone on a particular network, put the sim for that network in your phone before calling it.

This is probably the cheapest way of calling mobiles during weekdays but probably not the cheapest at the weekend. Will read up.

[squidgy]

Have just checked http://www.uswitch.com and http://www.magsys.co.uk - apparently Call 18866 are 10 per minute for all calls to mobiles during the week, and 2p per minute at the weekend! I can't find better than that, except for evening calls to Vodafone mobiles, which ought to be less than 7p per minute.

Call 18866 has 1p connection charge.

So I think the cheapest way to call mobiles is to sign up for Call 18866 - and wait until the weekend.

If you really can't wait until the weekend and think you're likely to talk for more than a few minutes each weekday, then unlock your mobile and get sims for Orange, Vodafone and O2.

• put the Orange SIM on the "Talk & Save" tariff
• put the Vodafone SIM on the "Smartstep" tariff
• put the O2 SIM on the "Talkalot" tariff
• don't bother getting a T-mobile SIM

Use the mobile phone with the relevant SIM if you think you're going to talk to Orange numbers or O2 numbers for more than 17 minutes in one day, or if you're going to talk to Vodafone numbers for more than 14 minutes in one day - otherwise, call from your home phone with the 18866 prefix.

It's never cheaper to call T-mobile numbers from a pre-pay mobile than from a BT fixed line.