<p>My daughter will be in London for her junior year abroad from September 2008 to June 2009. I have briefly looked into mobile phone plans, but am trying to figure out which makes the most sense for my daughter. It seems that a pay-as-you-go phone is better, because otherwise we have at least a 12-month contract, and many of those are associated with phones that have strange multiple rebates (for example, you need to apply multiple times, the first of which is 6 months after you receive the phone, etc.) that she will not be able to receive. It appears that through T-mobile she can get a pay-as-you-go mobile phone at a cost of around 40 to 60 pounds and then have to pay around 12 pence per minute for calling other mobile phones or landlines in the UK, and about 10 pence for sending a text message (through e2save.com). </p>
<p>I am not concerned about calling rates for me to call her, because I can use an international calling card and have reasonable rates to call her and she does not have to pay for receiving these calls. My daughter does not intend to send photos or videos to friends she meets in England, and our family will be the only ones she calls in the US (and we will call her), but I want to make sure she is able to reply when local friends / acquaintances / teachers, etc. call from London phone numbers.</p>
<p>Is this reasonable? What do others do when traveling as students in UK for less than a year? Does anyone have experience using a pay-as-you-go T-mobile plan in the UK?</p>
<p>Yes pay as you go is probably the best way to go, but your daughter might be best to wait until she gets to London and then walk into a shop that sells all the phone brands and calling plans (like Carphone Warehouse or Phones4U) and tell them exactly what she needs in terms of calls and the phone itself. They can advise her what the current best deal is. They do change frequently and that T-Mobile one sounds a bit expensive where text messaging is concerned. There might be some special deals on offer for students at the start of the academic year too.</p>
<p>Another possibility is finding another student that did a study abroad last year and see if they have an unlocked phone she can borrow. While in China this past year my daughter bought two unlocked cell phones and will give one of them to her brother to use in England this fall. From what I've heard cell phones are cheaper and contract-free when you purchase them overseas.</p>
<p>She can always use skype for calling home and she would only need a phone for local/new friend phone calls.</p>
<p>pafather- my d is in england (cambridge) now and I have pm'd you the specific recommendations for pay as you go deals that they made.</p>
<p>Also, I second KathieP's idea to find another student with an unlocked phone from last year if she can- in fact, d's cambridge program keeps previous year's students' phones and rents them out to students. It is so easy to buy a sim card.</p>
<p>But...it was so cheap to buy one, it was $60 for everything all in....we are there alot and our us phones are wrong network for travelling abroad so it seemed like a good buy for us to have one...</p>