Afternoon...!

Does anyone know of the cheapest way to call back to the UK from the following countries?

Czech Republic
Romania
Austria
Hungary
Bulgaria
Turkey

I tried a OneTel home and away card, but this only covers Austria, Hungary and Turkey and costs 29p per minute.

As always... the cheaper the better!

Rick

It may be best posting this on the MSE forum here.  I found that Andy88 is generally knowledgable when it comes to phone calls abroad.

Thanks, and sorry I haven't been here for a while.

You might consider callback services as well as calling cards, and perhaps have both available.

For calling cards, it depends slightly if you are thinking of landlines or mobiles. Some mobile networks have free 0800 and equivalent numbers, but some are blocked. I don't myself have a calling card that covers all those countries, but you could look at www.universalcaller.com or
www.enjoyprepaid.com
some of their numbers are blocked in some countries though. Both are affiliates or somehow part of Nobelcom.

There are some other American ones that  I need to remember where to look, and I'll try and come back with more. The Americans tend to have higher rates for some of these Eastern European countries.

Overall though I think a callback service is better. You call a trigger number, then hang up. Then you are called back with a ringing tone and dial the required number. Typical costs are very similar to cheap calls operators prices in the other direction.

Get a local SIM card in an unlocked mobile, and call cost for those countries to UK landline can be in the US 26c to 28c range. From landlines rates from 21c to 7c

I would recommend
www.callbackworld.com
www.enlinea.com

Both seem to be resellers of the same service, though Enlinea has cheaper rates in some cases, including some of those I think (I looked up Czech Rep the other day for someone). You have an account post-paid by credit card, and can have more than one number on the account, including landlines (like hotel room) for cheaper rates of course.

I also have a Riiing SIM which has calls to UK for €0.39 per minute + €0.25 connect, and free incoming calls in about 70 countries including all of those. It has a Liechtenstein number.
www.riiing.com

Riiing use its own callback system anyway, but it has been possible but a bit flaky recently to use it together with Enlinea or CBW with double callback and call costs of US 12c or 14c. ** Right now I would not rely on this as the only choice, but maybe use that and a local SIM and local landlines too. I also have routing number for incoming calls with Enlinea (and a UK 0844 that goes to it).

** Edit - it would appear that Enlinea tariffs for Liechtenstein mobile have increased. One service is now 43c but another is 21c. I've got an eye on CBW ... **

I hope this is a useful start, but may have too much confusing detail, and need editing when I'm more awake, so ask for more info where required.

ps I forgot to say

for detailed info on prepaid SIM cards, including tariffs and links to network sites

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

more int'l phonecards
some more still to remember though (these are affiliates for the same cards)

http://www.trycards.com/
http://www.masterbell.com/

For me it would be a laptop and a VOIP phone of some kind every time.  

As long as you can get a reasonable connection you should be able to use some kind of service to get a free connection back via a VOIP carrier - many of which offer free calls ing the UK - where you are calling from is not relavent.

I call free from Thailand to the UK with a Greentelnet phone -a sip phone.

You can use them anywhere in the world and to phone any other greentelnet phone it is free. If you call any other phone it is cheaper usually than the local PTT.

True it is inconvenient carrying a phone with you, but it does save money. In Thailand I pay less than a local call charge to phone non greentelnet phones.

::) :P ::) :P Don't you just love smilies?

Riiing with CBW or Enlinea seems to be fine now

7p for landlines as I say - *edit - tariff increases recently ...*

Don't know much about roaming with laptop and wireless or phone connection as regards costs ...

... but does it fit in your pocket?

The Buzzcard calling card I mentioned before now has more information on its website about call costs.

The previous claims that calls from abroad were not surcharged compared to UK-originated calls are no longer true; apparently the company emailed its customers the other day to declare these revised tariffs.

Quote:

Don't know much about roaming with laptop and wireless or phone connection as regards costs ... ... but does it fit in your pocket?

It doesn't fit in your pocket at all but you can get online most places in the world for the price of a local call. (dialup) in a lot of hotels and public places (broadband) for free + an increasing number of wifi zones for free or cheap.  ! If you have your laptop with you anyway then why waste a cent paying international rates  to call the UK when you could use. Voipcheap, Voipbuster or one of the currently free VOIP call providers.

If you don't like our friends Finarea then just use a free VOIP soft phone and setup a FWD, Gossiptel, Sipgate, Voipuser etc etc Number in each location - calls between users are free.  Then of course there is Skype, - free to call other Skype users + Google Talk MSN AOL Yahoo are all offering various combinations of free VOIP service.  If you can get on line then you can talk for free.  

VOIP is the new email.

Its what you laptop is for isnt it ? ;) ;)

I'm not denying that using voip is cheap, subject to local connection charges - some hotels charge quite highly though, and using a callback service to the hotel room is only 3 or 4p per minute.

But when I'm on an eleven hour drive passing through six countries or on many other occasions like out shopping or being a tourist the telephone is more convenient, and as explained only costs 7p per minute.

wrote on Sep 23^rd, 2005 at 12:52pm:

But when I'm on an eleven hour drive passing through six countries or on many other occasions like out shopping or being a tourist the telephone is more convenient, and as explained only costs 7p per minute.

Are you a lorry driver then Andy or an international salesman?

By the way I presume you are aware that people can call Riiing numbers from uk landlines for only 4p per minute using Ratebuster's 0844 number for Liechtenstein landline numbers?  Curiously their 0871 number for Liechtenstein mobiles doesn't work but who are we to complain at their munificence.

Nice theory from all these people about using broadband for nothing but roll on the day of cheap wireless broadband access is all I can say because we certainly aren't there yet!

Neither of those in fact - I think you'd have a bit of difficulty driving 800 miles a day in a lorry! Typically, I'll be abroad for one 3 week period and several 2 and 3 day trips per year.

I'm slightly surprised to find you are right. This may be because they do not have all their tables of what are are fixed and mobile numbers set up - other FL mobiles have numbers with 76, 77, 78, 79 + 5 figures - whereas Riiing is 663 + 6 figures.

Some carriers do not have coverage at all for maybe similar reasons - apparently there were times a while back when even BT would not have access (and more recently a friend told me he was charged the landline rate). But also there is a very wide range of tariffs between different carriers.

Maybe it will soon change, but thanks for now.

wrote on Sep 25^th, 2005 at 2:23pm:

I'm slightly surprised to find you are right.

Its nice to know I can be right on something even if not in my views of the 18866 price increase.  I also just registered for 18154 for unavoidable 0870 calls (for instance www.tivo.co.uk where there is definitely no alternative) so despite my critcism of Finarea hiding a price rise for one of their brands I am still using two of their other products....

As for Ratebuster well the staff in customer services were familiar with the question so its not like they didn't know about it.  I suspect things may change now that Centrica have decided to flog off Ratebuster, Onetel and various other telecoms brands to whoever wants to buy them.  The new owner of Ratebuster may be more observant and I suppose Finarea might even put in a bid for the Ratebuster customer base.

If you are only out of the uk for such short periods it sounds like you have the kind of business where you cannot afford to suddenly be out of touch.