does anyone have any tips or experience in choosing a good phone option for study abroad in the UK ? my d is going to royal Hollaway in surrey outside of London next semester.
att’s passport plan is pretty expensive for data use in a smart phone , if off wifi. I was wondering if there are other options. I hv heard of getting a sim card in the UK fro use in an unlocked smart phone to use in europe, but some pepople have said it is not that reliable.
anyone have experiience w/ using a locally bought sim card and putting it in your unlocked smart phone (an iphne 5s) ?
My son just got back from a semester at the University of Edinburgh. The day after he arrived, he purchased a Scottish SIM card & placed it in his unlocked iPhone. Got a Scottish phone number. We placed his AT&T acct on hold and had it reinstated the day before he returned home. It all worked out fine. She will have a UK phone number the duration of her trip.
thanks, renaissance. that’s the scenario I was thinking about. Couple of questions on this:
Did your son do any traveling outside of scotland? where? Did he hit the continent ?
How well did the phone work in those areas that were outside scotland?
Did he have a pay as you go affair or was it a set monthly price? what were the prices for voice, text and data? about how much was the sim card ?
When you put the att acct on hold, did att not charge you (reduce your phone bill)?
I studied abroad in Spain. Make sure your phone is unlocked before you go. For example, my phone was not compatible with other SIM cards when I was abroad (I have an iPhone 6 and my US provider is AT & T). I bought a factory unlocked iphone 4 on Ebay and bought a cheap SIM card to use. There are SIM cards you can use all over the EU and there’s usually cheap SIM cards for sale in airports abroad as well. When I was in Amsterdam for a week I bought a 15 euro Dutch SIM card, for example. This is the cheapest way to do it. These are pay as you go; I topped up the SIM card online.
Honestly, you could probably just have him put the phone on airplane mode and use wifi exclusively. Most everywhere has wifi nowadays; you can download whatsapp for text messages and use whatsapp or skype for calling over wifi. This is what many of my friends did when they were abroad.
My dad was not charged for my phone when I was abroad; we also put my account on hold.