My friend is in the USA on holiday at the moment and I send a New Year text message to him.
Should I have sent it with a prefix at the front as I just sent it as it was (as my mum told me when I was in Egypt she just sent it as it was didn't change the number?)
I don't know if the messages got through as I haven't had any replies yet.
Lee, you should be able to just send the text to the regular mobile number of your friend, without needing a country code prefix.
However.... US works on different networks to those in europe and most of the rest of the world, and your friend would need a triband phone at the least in order to access a network in the US ( and an activated roaming agreement etc with their service provider), so it may be that the message hasn't been received.
I did send messages with a prefix but they failed anyway so I've sent one to my friend, one to their mum and one to their step-dad ... I'm sure one of them will have looked into them using their phones abroad.
I know all their phones are tri-band but not sure about roaming bit. Would they have had to contact O2 their provider (one is payasyougo, two are on contracts)?
Also would the messages save up until they're back in the UK in a weeks time if they failed?
I think that the messages will be saved, but I am not absolutely certain.
I would imagine that they would have had to contact O2 to activate international roaming, yes. As you say, one would have thought that they would have contacted O2 in advance of travelling to allow for use.