"Scott" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 26 Jan 2010 20:54:30 -0000, "Steve Terry"
wrote:
"Scott" wrote in message
. ..
snip
I keep an old Orange OVP Virgin for roaming

This is a very interesting suggestion. Could you provide a bit more
information about how these work and who offers them.

I assume they are like Oyster with an automatic top-up of a specified
amount when the credit falls to a certain level. I cannot imagine
they would make a direct debit of a few pence each time a call is
made.

Then imagine, yes they are all paid for by DD, My OVP Virgin account
is in credit and so hasn't taken any DD for months
If i made a call for 5p then Orange would bill me that and send me a
itemised bill (daft init)

Also, do you know if O2 offers this and what it would be called.
I cannot find any obvious mention on their website.
Scott

I only know of the three i've mentioned:

Virgin with DD (on T Mobile network)
Orange OVP Virgin (ringfenced but can be transfered)
Three Zero (online billing)

Steve Terry
--
Get a free Three 3pay Sim with £2 bonus after £10 top up
http://freeagent.three.co.uk/stand/view/id/5276

In an earlier contribution to this discussion,
Steve Terry wrote:


Then imagine, yes they are all paid for by DD, My OVP Virgin account
is in credit and so hasn't taken any DD for months
If i made a call for 5p then Orange would bill me that and send me a
itemised bill (daft init)


My wife's last bill was for 2p! Mine are often less than 20p. I don't think
Orange makes much profit out of us - since the cost of posting a monthly
account to us invariably exceeds the invoice value - not to mention the bank
charges for processing a DD!

How is your account in credit? If Orange collects the outstanding amount
each month by DD, I don't understand how they have a surplus of your money.
--
Cheers,
Roger
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"Roger Mills" wrote in message
...
In an earlier contribution to this discussion,
Steve Terry wrote:

Then imagine, yes they are all paid for by DD, My OVP Virgin account
is in credit and so hasn't taken any DD for months
If i made a call for 5p then Orange would bill me that and send me a
itemised bill (daft init)


My wife's last bill was for 2p! Mine are often less than 20p. I don't
think Orange makes much profit out of us - since the cost of posting a
monthly account to us invariably exceeds the invoice value - not to
mention the bank charges for processing a DD!

How is your account in credit? If Orange collects the outstanding amount
each month by DD, I don't understand how they have a surplus of your
money.
Cheers,
Roger


Couple of years ago Orange cocked up my account and without asking me
closed it, as compensation after reinstating it they gave me some credit.

Only reason OVP Virgin has free paper Itemised Billing is to mirror
Virgins offering, Orange took a long time to decide to OVP Virgin's
offering and lived to regret it. It's probably the main reason FT Orange
gave up on OVPs

Steve Terry
--
Get a free Three 3pay Sim with £2 bonus after £10 top up
http://freeagent.three.co.uk/stand/view/id/5276

In an earlier contribution to this discussion,
Steve Terry wrote:

"Roger Mills" wrote in message
...

How is your account in credit? If Orange collects the outstanding
amount each month by DD, I don't understand how they have a surplus
of your money.

Couple of years ago Orange cocked up my account and without asking me
closed it, as compensation after reinstating it they gave me some
credit.

Ah, I see!


Only reason OVP Virgin has free paper Itemised Billing is to mirror
Virgins offering, Orange took a long time to decide to OVP Virgin's
offering and lived to regret it. It's probably the main reason FT
Orange gave up on OVPs

Steve Terry

At one time, we were notifed that they were stopping sending out itemised
bills, but that they would still be available on-line. However, that never
happened, and we're still getting them through the post. ISTR that they
started charging £1 per month for itemised bills on some types of account -
but probably couldn't do it on OVP Virgin because it wouldn't then match
Virgin's offering.

ISTR that, at one time, they said that you could have *any* other company's
tariff rather than theirs if you preferred - but the Virgin one is the only
one which has seemed to survive, and even then, only for those already on
it.

They actually seemed to be pushing it in the early days. When I retired in
2000, the company gave me my phone - which had been on an Orange contract. I
was negotiating with Orange to move it onto a PAYG tariff, since I didn't
expect to be using it very much, and *they* suggested going to OVP Virgin
instead. My wife had an Orange pre-paid phone which she had bought (for a
single payment covering the phone itself and a year's worth of calls - or
was it two?) Anyway, when the free calls ran out, she had that converted to
OVP Virgin too. Since then, we've each had a couple of free phone upgrades.
Not sure you can do *that* any more!
--
Cheers,
Roger
______
Email address maintained for newsgroup use only, and not regularly
monitored.. Messages sent to it may not be read for several weeks.
PLEASE REPLY TO NEWSGROUP!

On 27 Jan, 17:43, "Steve Terry" wrote:
"SimonC" wrote in message

... "Steve Terry" wrote in message
...

Don't even dream of using a PAYG for roaming, go for a zero per month
contract sim like Virgin with Direct Debit added, or if you can find one
an Orange OVP Virgin or even a 3 zero sim.

Is this true for all PAYG services Steve? *I recently moved to giffgaff
and they seem to have pretty good roaming rates (for the EU at least).
This is my first foray into the world of PAYG for a good many years though
so I'm not sure what issues there may be for roaming? *I'll be roaming in
France, Belgium and Germany over the coming months so I would be
interested to know what issues I might face.

Not sure about giff gaff roaming rates

Cheapest of all would be a local Sim, and let people back home know your
new foreign number for them to call.
Usually much cheaper than roaming to call back to the UK, and often cheap
to call from the UK, especially using a cheap calling card or VOIP.

But if you want manual control of selecting roaming networks, you'll need a
contract sim like Virgin with DD.

I don't think it's necessary to have a contract SIM for roaming

Most prepaid SIMs roam in plenty of countries, on plenty of networks,
with the ability to manually select amongst the networks available,
and I've never ever heard this suggestion before

The networks list on their websites where they roam, and it is true
that prepaid has a smaller list, but in Europe and a lot of other
places, there really would not be a problem.

And there isn't as much need to manually select network as there used
to be. Vodafone Passport was extended to any network at all in much of
Europe, not just one network per country as it used to be. 3 Like Home
was abolished by 3 UK, though not others, so that no longer has any
need for preference for UK users. One case where you would select
would be roaming with O2 in Ireland, if you'd added a bolt-on for
cheap calls.

One possibility to think about is a global roaming SIM with free
incoming calls in plenty of countries. These all use callback, as
described a couple of times on the thread, though most dial the number
conventionally as far as the user is concerned and hide the *1nn*
prefix and # suffix or the alternative trigger of sending an sms. And
giffgaff can call or be forwarded to the IoM or Jersey numbers of many
of these for 8p/min

Or yes, local SIMs in various countries have international rates
starting from only a few cents a minute

But going back to Simon's question, roaming with giffgaff will be no
problem whatsoever in western Europe, and the rates are the same as
the Eurotariff available from all EU based brands.

On 3 Feb, 03:04, andy wrote:

I don't think it's necessary to have a contract SIM for roaming
[snip]

One possibility to think about is a global roaming SIM with free
incoming calls in plenty of countries. These all use callback, as
described a couple of times on the thread, though most dial the number
conventionally as far as the user is concerned and hide the *1nn*
prefix and # suffix or the alternative trigger of sending an sms. And
giffgaff can call or be forwarded to the IoM or Jersey numbers of many
of these for 8p/min


apologies, but in the middle of all that, I forgot to also mention
O2's My Europe Extra, which is well worth considering - £10 a month
fee, then free incoming calls, 25p/min outgoing calls to over 30
countries - again it would be worth doing this and forwarding giffgaff
to it if the expected call volume warranted it

and look at separate callback services ...

On 03/02/2010 03:04, andy wrote:
On 27 Jan, 17:43, "Steve wrote:

But if you want manual control of selecting roaming networks, you'll need a
contract sim like Virgin with DD.

I don't think it's necessary to have a contract SIM for roaming

Most prepaid SIMs roam in plenty of countries, on plenty of networks,
with the ability to manually select amongst the networks available,
and I've never ever heard this suggestion before

There are still many countries where PAYG roaming isn't possible or only
with a very limited network choice in the country. A contract SIM will
give you a better chance of getting a usable signal when roaming.

A real world example of a European country, which I've visited fairly
regularly since 2001 is Ukraine. I believe until recently none of the UK
metworks had PAYG roaming agreements. It does appear that in the last
few months ONE of the UK networks (3, who I have my current contract
with anyway) now has a PAYG agreement with ONE of the Ukrainian networks
(Astelit LLC / "Life"). However, Life currently has the poorest
coverage of the Ukrainian networks!

I do have a local sim, but there are a few sections of the major road
from Kiev south to Dnepropetrovsk where it doesn't give coverage and my
main use for that sim is internet access when staying at my
mother-in-laws. If friends and family need to contact me, they use my
normal UK mobile number.

Steve

On 3 Feb, 06:38, Steve Wyles wrote:
On 03/02/2010 03:04, andy wrote:

On 27 Jan, 17:43, "Steve *wrote:

But if you want manual control of selecting roaming networks, you'll need a
contract sim like Virgin with DD.

I don't think it's necessary to have a contract SIM for roaming

Most prepaid SIMs roam in plenty of countries, on plenty of networks,
with the ability to manually select amongst the networks available,
and I've never ever heard this suggestion before

There are still many countries where PAYG roaming isn't possible or only
with a very limited network choice in the country. A contract SIM will
give you a better chance of getting a usable signal when roaming.

A real world example of a European country, which I've visited fairly
regularly since 2001 is Ukraine. I believe until recently none of the UK
metworks had PAYG roaming agreements. It does appear that in the last
few months ONE of the UK networks (3, who I have my current contract
with anyway) now has a PAYG agreement with ONE of the Ukrainian networks
(Astelit LLC / "Life"). However, Life currently has the poorest
coverage of the Ukrainian networks!

First one I looked up - Orange says it has payg roaming on Beeline and
Kyivstar

"Steve Wyles" wrote in message
...
On 03/02/2010 03:04, andy wrote:
On 27 Jan, 17:43, "Steve wrote:

But if you want manual control of selecting roaming networks, you'll
need a
contract sim like Virgin with DD.

I don't think it's necessary to have a contract SIM for roaming

Most prepaid SIMs roam in plenty of countries, on plenty of networks,
with the ability to manually select amongst the networks available,
and I've never ever heard this suggestion before

There are still many countries where PAYG roaming isn't possible or only
with a very limited network choice in the country. A contract SIM will
give you a better chance of getting a usable signal when roaming.

A real world example of a European country, which I've visited fairly
regularly since 2001 is Ukraine. I believe until recently none of the UK
metworks had PAYG roaming agreements. It does appear that in the last few
months ONE of the UK networks (3, who I have my current contract with
anyway) now has a PAYG agreement with ONE of the Ukrainian networks
(Astelit LLC / "Life"). However, Life currently has the poorest
coverage of the Ukrainian networks!

I do have a local sim, but there are a few sections of the major road from
Kiev south to Dnepropetrovsk where it doesn't give coverage and my main
use for that sim is internet access when staying at my mother-in-laws. If
friends and family need to contact me, they use my normal UK mobile
number.
Steve


Wot he said

Also UK contract Sim roaming is often cheaper than UK PAYG roaming
But PAYG roaming costs are easier to limit

Steve Terry
--
Get a free Three 3pay Sim with £2 bonus after £10 top up
http://freeagent.three.co.uk/stand/view/id/5276