Prepaid sim card for making calls to US from UK?

[cpacini]

My mother is going on vacation to England for a couple of weeks, does anyone have any suggestions for an inexpensive prepaid sim I could direct her to that would allow her to make calls/texts back to the US? She probably wont need much data or local minutes while she is there, but international calls/texts are a must.

 

[pm]

Get an unlocked GSM phone - either off of Craigslist or Ebay, or just get a Nokia 520 from Amazon for less than $100 (my wife has one, it's a great phone) - and then when your mother lands in London have her go into a Carphone Warehouse in the airport or pretty much on every street corner in London. They are not quite as easy to find as a Starbucks in the US, but there are lots and lots of them.

Anyway, tell her to go into a Carphone Warehouse and have her talk to the staff there and ask them what the best choice is. If you want my advice, though, I would just get an internet enabled SIM and then preload Skype onto the phone. The 3G network there is generally good enough to make a Skype phone call from. I got "unlimited data" SIM from Carphone Warehouse for $18 US dollars that gave me unlimited data for the month that I was there and just made calls on Skype over the 3G network and it worked great. It was some sort of 1 month intro offer that they found but since I was there for just one month, it worked perfectly.

In fact, I think I got something pretty much like the 4G "web only" deal for GBP14 here:
http://www.carphonewarehouse.com/sims/pay-monthly/o2-paym#deals
except that the data was "unlimited" - but 1GB should more than enough for 2 weeks. But anyway, just have her talk to the sales staff and they will sign her up. It should be less than USD$20 to do whatever she wants (within reason).

Then when she comes back, Ebay the phone (or Craiglist) and she should get most of her money back.

 

[thedosbox]

What phone does your mother have? If she can get it SIM unlocked, picking up a local SIM with unlimited data only costs about £15 (US$25). I got one from "Three" last summer, but all the big carriers (e.g. EE, Vodafone) have similar offers.

http://www.three.co.uk/Store/SIM/Pay_As_You_Go

 

[s44]

Is she planning to call people besides the family? Because I'd just use Hangouts with a local SIM.

 

[paperwastage]

if you are already on t-mobile simple choice family plan postpaid (with credit check) with less than 5 lines, add another line on your family plan for $10 for a month

you get unlimited texting (back to USA?) and 2G data. calls back to USA are $0.20 per minute

http://www.t-mobile.com/optional-services/international-service.html

*technically you aren't supposed to do this