If you take your mobile phone abroad “on the offchance I need it”, or are a regular traveller abroad, then you may want to look into MaxRoam, an Irish based company. Although there’s a small monthly charge of 1 Euro (clearly and honestly explained on the website), they offer very low roaming charges for calls back to the UK, for receiving calls whilst abroad, and for calling in the country you are visiting. They achieve this by supplying you a new SIM card (so your phone either needs to be unlocked, or they offer a discount on getting your phone unlocked), which you use in place of your “UK” SIM card. Best of all, if you are a regular traveller, you are able to select upto 50 landline numbers that route to your phone (like all mobiles whilst roaming, there is a charge for receiving calls).

Let’s take France as an example, and compare the rates to Orange UK:

• To receive a 5 minute call: 95p (Orange), 75p (MaxRoam)
• To make a 5 minute call back to a UK landline: £1.90 (Orange), £1.34 (MaxRoam)
• To make a 5 minute call to a landline number in France: £1.90 (Orange), £1.34 (MaxRoam)
• To make a 5 minute call to your voicemail: £1.90 (Orange), £1.03 (MaxRoam)

As you can see, there are savings to be made over using your own phone number. We should point out you should go and check the MaxRoam website for yourself to ensure you are happy with the rates; MaxRoam bill in Euros, so there is the exchange rate to take into account, plus the small monthly fee. There are also odd occasions when MaxRoam are more expensive by a few pence. Orange and MaxRoam roaming rates for France, plus Euro/GBP rate taken as at 22nd June 2008. MaxRoam allow you to TopUp over the web.

If you are a regular traveller, you may well find combining a MaxRoam SIM with a local number in the country you visit will work out cheaper for both you and people calling you.

Head off to the MaxRoam website and find out more; for roughly £24 you will be sent a SIM, be given a local landline number in UK, France, Ireland or USA, and get 5€ credit on your account, alternatively, for £44, you’ll get the SIM, the landline number, and 30€ of credit.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 23rd, 2008 at 12:16 pm and is filed under Gadgets. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.