On 2006-12-20, robertharvey@my-deja.com <robertharvey@my-deja.com> wrote:
> Dan wrote:
>> ok thats cool, so it dosent cost me extra to send texts to a UK number
>> abroad(canada)....is that the same if i call the person...? as i have
>> free minutes and texts ....will it cost them to recieve the call?
>> sorry i just want to confirm lol
>
> It varies so much with uk network, roaming network, and country that it
> is difficult to be dogmatic. On my business T-mobile it costs me 30p
> to recieve a uk text in the USA, and $3.50 per minute to recieve a UK
> incoming call, the same as making one. IN Brazil that was up to 50p
> per text, and 11.5BR per minute. In Trinidad it was free and 50p per
> minute.

Boy, that doesn't sound right. With my T-Mobile PAYG account incoming
text seems to be free everywhere it works at all. I also know it roams
at 55p/minute for voice in the USA and Canada, and from the web page
is UKP1.40/minute for voice in Brazil. And if you are getting voice
at 50p/minute in Trinidad, including outgoing overseas calls, you may be
doing better than even a local PAYG SIM; calling costs in Trinidad
are horrible, and the T-Mobile web page calls it UKP1.40/minute for
PAYG roaming there.

In any case, it costs the person who is roaming to receive a voice call
and it is expensive enough that the average person who is paying their
own bill is unlikely to want to chat for a long time when someone
phones them. I wish roaming were cheaper; right now I have a collection
of local PAYG SIMs for countries I visit often enough to keep them
alive, and I keep a London geographical number along with Hong Kong
and USA mobile numbers alive where I am by forwarding through Skype
to the local number. Some places this works really well. I spent
3 weeks in China last month getting calls that cost me 1.2p/minute
and were cheap local calls to most of the callers.

Dennis Ferguson