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Question of the Day: What's the most interesting small town you've visited in South Africa?
Done roamin'
- Thread starter rpm
- Start date
XCentricdave
Well-Known Member
Yup, which is why I bought a UK 3G SIM from a brightly coloured operator. Which cost 5GBP, and that included 5GBP of calls...
If you travel regularly you can keep the same SIM alive and you have an overseas number you can give out - bit of a nuisance on the handover and you may miss the odd message here and there. If you only travel occasionally you'll need to get a new SIM in each place and you have the hassle of a new number to pass around - but maybe that's nice, you can choose who has your number whilst you are away.
International roaming charges are a scam an should be sorted out, but until they do I know what I'll be doing...
If you travel regularly you can keep the same SIM alive and you have an overseas number you can give out - bit of a nuisance on the handover and you may miss the odd message here and there. If you only travel occasionally you'll need to get a new SIM in each place and you have the hassle of a new number to pass around - but maybe that's nice, you can choose who has your number whilst you are away.
International roaming charges are a scam an should be sorted out, but until they do I know what I'll be doing...
The answer is....hmmm........ Skype.
As soon as we can all get SkypeIn numbers, you'll be sorted. I'm running fring on my Nokia 6680 which enables Skype. Most cellular operators have at least 3G, which is enough for a Skype call. Just get yourself a 100MB odd databundle and you'd be chatting away.
If you had an SkypeIn number here in SA, someone could phone you, paying for a local call, and your phone would buzz whereever in the world you are.
As for the moment, if you do go for the Skype route, they need to use Skype to phone u.
Oh, and of course, if you need to phone South African numbers Skype's rates are decently priced.
As soon as we can all get SkypeIn numbers, you'll be sorted. I'm running fring on my Nokia 6680 which enables Skype. Most cellular operators have at least 3G, which is enough for a Skype call. Just get yourself a 100MB odd databundle and you'd be chatting away.
If you had an SkypeIn number here in SA, someone could phone you, paying for a local call, and your phone would buzz whereever in the world you are.
As for the moment, if you do go for the Skype route, they need to use Skype to phone u.
Oh, and of course, if you need to phone South African numbers Skype's rates are decently priced.
Pitbull
Verboten
PLS PLS PLS tell me u haven't used Skype while roaming.
Do u know that roaming data can cost up to R 150 per MB !
Not too bad? Vodacom passport calls in the UK are r2.35 plus a connection fee of r17.50 for a local call. If someone calls you still get charged the r17.50. Where ever I go I buy a local sim.
I think he meant forwarding calls from his Skype number to a prepaid sim overseas, hopefully! Data roaming charges are
Havent bought data overseas. I meant to say get a prepaid sim, and prepaid data at your destination.
Its all relative.
Was thinking of the time I was charged R50/min while roaming in the UK when I wrote that. 
It would be interesting to know the breakdown of these costs. There would be the Telkom international linkage costs, local call costs, interconnection charge at the overseas destination to name just a few I could think of. Maybe with more cables and more players in providing international bandwith, as well as better technology (e.g. mobile VoIP), costs would come down.
Or even www.fring.com sadly only works on a few nokia's at the moment, but these are not here to make friends they in it for the money!
stvfry
Active Member
As I am going to the UK shortly, I did some investigating of the UK Prepaid sim options and found that on average their out of bundle data rates were horrendous (R14 MB) and they didn't seem to offer pre paid data bundles at all. You needed to take out an 18 month contract to get reasonable data bundles.
I think it was T-Mobile who stated that the sim should not be used in a phone being used as a modem connected to a laptop. Maybe we are not so badly off with our data rates and practices after all!