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To take the Passport example in detail, it was mentioned that it cost about £1 a minute to call a UK 0870 from abroad, and I suggested using it with a 18185 account off-peak could cost under 10 pence a minute [old Voda tariff, it is true]. I do not see how this can be described as stalking.

Since then, it appears that using O2 and a couple of other providers could allow these roaming calls (to 0870) to be made for as little as 3.3 pence a minute, or
by another method 6 pence peak, 4 pence weekends. That could be possible from a mobile in almost any country in the world, but certainly from nearly 100.

There are plenty of other mobile tariffs that charge up to £1 per minute or more for calling 0870 though and treat them as non standard calls which you choose to continue to ignore.  Also most of your suggested cheaper methods involve avoiding calling with your phone provider's normal overseas tariff and so will not be used by 99% of those calling.

You may be able to call more cheaply with 01/02 dial through numbers with a service like 18185 (especially using Vodafone Passport where they will be charged at 75 per call instead of the normal Vodafone UK per minute charge on your tariff plus the 18185 call price per minute) but Vodafone may close down access to those dial through numbers at any moment and they are hardly the authorised normal calling route that most callers will use are they?

My comments all relate to the cost of calling 0870 from outside the UK although I do know that TMobile charge 12p per minute to all UK 01/02 numbers and mobile numbers at all times but 40p per minute to all 084/7 numbers at all times.  So your contention that 0870 is not always charged at a large premium on mobile phones within the UK is not always accurate.

As to calling in the EU you can call back to 01/02 numbers and mobile numbers with Vodafone for 75p per call on Vodafone Passport and then use your bundled minutes or pay from as little as 5p per minute on some of their Pay As You Go tariffs (eg SmartPlus) OffPeak and at weekends.  But calling an 0870 number will cost 99p per minute at all times.  Just 1p per minute less than £1 per minute.

So there is still major price inflation for these calls in many situations that cannot be justified by the underlying additional costs to the mobile operator concerned.  However you choose to find the examples where this does not happen largely because you appear to enjoy gainsaying people and trying to prove that you are cleverer than them.  Your contrasts are not balanced because they do not include all possible situations.

andy9 wrote on Feb 25^th, 2007 at 11:46pm:
We did.

They're currently no mobile networks (PAYG or contract) that charge anywhere near a £1 to call an 0870 whilst in the UK.

I believe the highest charge is 40p/min to call 084x/087x numbers from their PAYG tariffs.  T-mobile used to have a page for "specialised numbers" which is no more I'm afraid.  In my FoI requests, I point out that calls to 08x from mobiles can be upto 40p/min from some mobile networks.

Andy9 is also correct when he stated that it was originally 0870advice that incorrectly reported that mobile networks charge upto £1.

As for the cost of calling 084x/087x from outside the UK, I cannot comment on that as I have no idea how much is charged.

NGM, can you provide a link or something that states that mobile networks do charge nearly £1 for calls to 0870 whilst roaming?

Remember that the costs of roaming are high anyhow and is being investigated by the Eurpopean Commission (note how it's not being investigated by Ofcom or anyone in this country?)

When NGM first mentioned this, I wondered if and mentioned the possibility that the phone had roamed on to another network than Vodafone or its partner, partly as he also said something about incoming calls being charged when called from some sources.

Having spent a considerable time on the phone to Vodafone, including maliciously being put on hold for 10 minutes then connected to a fax machine, and a separate query about unpublished changes in terms and conditions that were misapplied and caused a payt SIM to be disconnected only a few weeks after the last charged call, I must say that I entirely sympathise with any observation that Vodafone is trenchantly opposed to dealing helpfully with queries about these numbers; two supervisors instructed call centre staff to tell me that I should ask the destination company to tell me Vodafone tariffs, and one idiot said I should ask the Government.

I have been told exactly the same as what NGM says, except additionally with a 75p connect fee even though this is not on a Passport tariff (it was the person I asked to explain this who zapped me with the fax machine at the end of my third period on hold). The trouble is that I have been told about four other things as well, mostly mutually conflicting like 35p, 36p, 43p, 75p, 89p (75 + vat).

Clearly this is mostly a Vodafone policy issue rather than inherent in 0870 numbers themselves, and I can't be bothered to decide if this obstructionism is deliberate or negligent, or waste more time getting answers that I'd have no faith in. I'd repeat the work-around advice on using 18185 or a calling card, not only for 0870, but also concatenating a series of short calls to save Passport connection fees.

Other UK network's roaming charges have been the same whether to landline, mobile or non-geographic numbers, but as these are now getting cheaper maybe some differences will start to appear - for example 3 can use contract or payg add-on bundled inclusive minutes when roaming on 3 networks, but 0870 numbers are not included.

Cheaper roaming possibilities apply as much to non-geo numbers as any other. On the Manx SIMs for example, 08... numbers are between landline and mobile tariffs, so it is worth looking at forwarding or callthrough 0871 numbers.

And using separate callback is cheaper with any of the global SIMs. For a trip of a couple of weeks or so, people might look at O2's My Europe Extra and exploit the free incoming calls by using it with callback

NGMsGhost wrote on Feb 27^th, 2007 at 2:45pm:

Without Passport, it does now look like the most expensive, but fortunately they extended the country range. Make sure the network is manually selected 

If you're planning more trips there, you might look at O2 as well, or local SIM cards.

O2's single-country Spain option means for a £5 a month fee, incoming calls are free, outgoing 25p. Then use callback for outgoing calls less than that.

Or amongst local SIMs, Vodafone has a 60 for 1 minutes option, useful with a calling card local access, Orange has a pack that includes its own calling card with very modest international calls, etc ...

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

http://www.prepaidgsm.net/forum/showthread.php?t=1548

This is very interesting now.  It seems the cost of ringing these numbers is unknown by Vodafone staff themselves.

In all fairness to Vodafone, I believe its probably the same across the board of mobile network providers.

The cheapest method by far would be to get a sim card from a network that operates in the country you're visiting then I assume?  This and telling people not to ring you whilst you're abroad and you'll ring them instead is the better solution?

My sister went abroad last year and instead of texting me, she actually sent MMS instead because it was actually cheaper to MMS (plain text) than to actually send a text message.  This proves that the mobile networks are deliberatly increasing costs more then they need to because the cost of an MMS is more than a text except for when you're abroad that is.  The reason for that is because mobile networks know that many people call/text than use MMS so they artifically increase the price of their calls/texts instead.

Dave wrote on Feb 27^th, 2007 at 9:33pm:
I think that's probably whats happened as well.  Vodafone are very specific about which vodafone partners you can use with Vodafone passport and most people have their phone set to automatic.  I believe vodafone know this but it's not in their favour to ensure people set their phones to manual and therefore manually select the network which is compatible with Vodafone Passport.

Basically, another con to make consumers think they're getting a really good/cheaper deal but has a lot of (mostly unknown) t&c associated with it - main one being that it only works on very specific foreign networks (mostly vodafone I think as well).