Contacting UK whilst aboad

[Newstart]

We are about to me mobile throughout Europe.

We need a mobile phone which will receive e.mails, texts at any time. We need to connect to the internet and send e.mails using a PC. We need to keep the costs down. We will be living in a large mobile home.

Do we buy outright and subscribe to PAYG.

Please help

[scottporter]

I would suggest a quick trip to carphone warehouse. Vodaphone have some kind of offer for foreign calls on at the moment, I think it's a flat fee, then all your calls are treated as national, rather than international, or something like that. A contract may work out cheaper than pay-as-you-go, especially if you're going to be doing a lot of calling etc.

[Jayemm999]

Just got back from the Czech Republic! I'm on a Vodafone Pay Monthly "Online" tariff [their tarifs are much lower if bought from vodafone.co.uk]. The "passport" thingy that gives the flat rate are for certain european countries only [the ones where they operate] and didn't include CZ. However, the cost of items came to 30p a text and �1.25 per minute. If you want the internet, be careful because dial-up would cost a fortune on any tariff and avoid WAP/GPRS because I used in once, only to see if it worked, and that set me back a cool �2! A wireless card in the laptop, and/or a patch cable, might let you use "free" HotSpots in Hotel lobbies - buy a coffee and connect! It worked for me.