This is particularly aimed at those of you who travel between UK and Switzerland fairly regularly.

Do you have separate phones/contracts for different countries, or have you found a universal deal?

There are often stories about that if you use a phone in another country, the costs can be horrendous, particularly for mobile internet.

At present I have a Vodaphone contract without internet in the UK. In Switzerland, I am charged the same for calls and texts as in the UK plus a flat fee per call.

I am looking at upgrading to something like a Blackberry, iPhone or Google G1. Suppliers in the UK have given me wildly varying information from vague, misleading or unbelievable to 'Don't bother trying to use mobile internet overseas'.

If you have separate phones for each country, which one is best for international call, Swiss or UK?

Looking forward to your comments and suggestions. Thanks

__________________
Rod

Spending equal time in each, I read the Martin Lewis website www.moneysavingexpert.com which does go into this in some detail. I have a English & Swiss phone and a landline in both countries. In CH I have a pay as you go -Nokia - . I always say to people to ring on the landline but they always call my UK mobile which costs me a fortune to receive the call.
What really annoys me is the messages you get from the telecom companies welcoming you to the Country and you pay to receive it and to read it. Now I try to turn UK phone off here .
If you have any better ideas do share them.

If I may take this important point of interest a bit
further...

Recently and in the future I will travel to Asia (China,
Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and more...). There
are a few companies that offer really inexpensive
telephone services on a wide spread international
basis. United Mobile is one that I was seriously
considering.

United Mobile is based in Liechtenstein and (I think)
UK. Their services are among the least expensive. I
talked to one of their existing customers, I asked how
does the service work? Check this out... when you
want to make a call, you dial the number then hit
connect. The telephone sends a SMS to United Mobile
in Liechtenstein or UK (depending on where your
services are based out of). United Mobile then calls
you, your phone rings (you are connected to a local
network/service provider). You answer, then United
Mobile calls the other party (the one you want to
call)... It rings, they pick up, you talk.

Easy, simple, inexpensive, international... Yes. Since I
do not talk much or long when abroad... I still have
not decided if I want to buy into United Mobile or stay
with my current Sunrise-Abo handy and Skype.

__________________

I have my UK landline on divert to my mobile when I am in Switzerland. This only costs me the mobile flat fee for receiving the call plus the divert service, which I use in the UK anyway. The caller pays at the standard rate to my landline. Despite this, some people still call my mobile.

I get the service calls when crossing borders. I don't think that I have had charges for these. I will check my next bill.

Thanks for this. It looks interesting and the sort of thing that I want. I will check this in more detail.

United Mobile has its Headquarters in Kloten, with offices in Liechenstein and UK as you mentioned.

Hi Rod, consider the Multi-SIM to manage two SIM cards.

Simore postal address:

Stancom
Chemin du Signal 5,
1296 COPPET, Switzerland
http://www.stancom.ch

Hotline: +423 663 20 44 07

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These are popular in Asia.

I use http://www.gymsim.com/ for mobile which has free incoming calls more or less anywhere and OK outgoing calls.

I use http://www.skype.com with UK and CH SkypeIn numbers in the dialing code where most people who call me live so it is a local call for them for everything else.

Mobilezone is actually selling a Samsung phone that uses two SIM-cards at the same time

peter

I have my UK mobile and a Swiss mobile. The UK is on an Orange contract and I only use it in emergancies. The Swiss mobile I bought from the Western Union in the Bahnoff, Basel. The Orange is 90pence per minute to dial the UK and 29p to recieve. The Swiss mobile (Lebara) is 4 rappen a minute to a landline and 29 rappen a minute to a mobile in the UK (free calls to other Lebara users). To call my wife in the UK I use Skype on the laptop which is free.

Hope this helps.....Mike

Why do you need a special SIM card for this?
We use often webservices as webcalldirect.com to call China that works the same and you can keep your Sunrise Sim to use it...

Thanks for the tip, will look into that one. Does it call my +41..... handy
number? If so, then it does not make sense, same as calling direct via
roaming handy.

When here in the studio, I use VoIPBuster (dot com) sometimes.
For SIP I use SIPDiscount (dot com) parallel to my land line on the same
handset. Problem is, they cost too much to call a handy.

Any idea whether Switzerland will ever have a local Skype to go dial in number?