Need advice on long-distance telephone service

Hi All,

I'll be arriving in the UK Thurs. morning and one of the first things I need to do is choose a long-distance plan for the landline in the cottage I'll be staying in. Any tips on who has the cheapest rates? I'll be calling Canada and Switzerland quite a bit I imagine. And how does it work- i.e, if I get BT for local calls, do I have to use them for LD, or is it like in the U.S. where the two providers can be different?

I read the post on mobile phones- it sounds like finding the right cell phone is a nightmare...I'm hoping that there are some really good deals with regular service at least. In the U.S., for example, I've been using an obscure, "two guys and a shed" type company called World XChange and it's been very affordable indeed.

Thanks very much,

SUN KING

We have bt for our local calls and use onetel for our international calls. It's something stupid like 3p a minute to the US ! I'm sure they'll have more info on their site!

http://www.onetel.com

Hope this helps!

We chose to keep our BT phoneline (£10 per month) and then use www.telcoglobal.com for all our calls - there's no monthly/connection charge, you just pay for the calls you make, and our calls to USA are 2p per minute.

We chose to keep our BT phoneline (£10 per month) and then use www.telcoglobal.com for all our calls - there's no monthly/connection charge, you just pay for the calls you make, and our calls to USA are 2p per minute.

Yep, that's what we've done.  My long distance bills are so small now I don't even notice them (seriously, like about £5/month).  If you want to make sure that you are getting the best deal, go to www.moneysupermarket.com.  They'll ask you some questions about your phone use, and then find the deal that suits you best.

I second ONETEL as a long-distance provider.  Our bills are usually less than 10 pounds a month, and I call my family back in the US pretty frequently.  :-)

http://www.onetel.co.uk/index.php

Another OneTel user - we've been using it for years, now, and have been very happy with it.  Lets the boys call their grandmother whenever they want without us having to "watch the clock."

We use Quip http://www.quip.co.uk and it is really handy (AND CHEAP!) as you don't have to switch phone companies. You only dial their number first before dialling the number you want to call but I don't find that to be a hassle.

Calls to the US are only 3p per minute. They don't charge you for non-connected calls and they supposedly calculate your time per second instead of per minute. But considering my mom keeps me on the phone for hours at a time, it's a real bargain!! 

They have rates on their site for other countries too.

There's something about One.Tel and Orange...you can make calls to the US for the same 3p/min rate on your Orange mobile. I haven't fully looked into it, but the info's up on One.Tel's site.

Another satisfied Onetel user here.  BT line, Onetel for long distance and we both use it from our Orange mobiles too.