Cutting the cost of intercontinental calls

If you are not careful, making international calls from a mobile phone can cost you a lot of money. If you have a standard pay as you go or contract phone, you can usually make international calls without doing anything to change your phone, but this can be a costly business. When you do this, you will be actually making two calls, as it is charged separately for your own network and the host network. It is the latter of these two that is the more expensive in most instances, as you have to pay a premium rate.

One way to save you money is to insert a new SIM into your mobile phone that allows you to make much cheaper international calls. These can be found on the internet and in shops. In order to fit a new SIM, you may have to get your phone unlocked. You could get this done in a mobile phone shop. You could get it done over the internet, or you could use your networks own unlocking service. Once you have done this, your SIM can be changed any number of times.

Usually, your phone number will change when you do this, although it is not to difficult to get the number changed back if you are not under contract. If you want to keep both, you can just swap the SIMS whenever you need to make an overseas phone call.

An easier option might be to use another mobile phone to make overseas calls with. It may be the case that you have an old one kicking about that you can use for this purpose, or you could ask relatives and friends if they have one that you can use. With this type of set up, people can still reach you on your old number, but you can make cheap calls with the other one. Alte
atively, you could buy an international call card, with which you can make inexpensive calls with any phone using a third party phone operator. This is a bit more time consuming, but it may be the best solution if you do not need to do this regularly.