Being far from home, it is important to have an opportunity to keep in touch. In London you will find various facilities for this purpose.
Phoning locally
You will notice those familiar red phone boxes on every London street corner. The minimum cost to make a call to a local landline from a public payphone, is 20p (which will buy you a 110-second local phone call). Some payphones, such as counter-top ones found in many pubs, however, often require more.
Public payphones take coins or prepaid phone cards, and some of the newer ones even take credit cards. British Telecom (BT) phone cards are available from post offices and many newsagents and come in denominations of £2, £5, £10 and £20. Call boxes with the green phone card symbol take prepaid cards.
Phoning home
Making a standard phone call home will cost you an arm and a leg for a couple of minutes' chat. Luckily, there are hundreds of companies who sell prepaid phone cards that allow you to make calls at much reduced rates - only 2p-4p per minute to Australia or New Zealand and about 14p to South Africa.
International phone cards can be bought at most newsagents and Post Offices and usually come in dominations of £5, £10 and £20. With the card you get an access number and a pin number. You simply dial your access number, enter your pin and talk away. Costs are automatically subtracted from your card. You can call from any touch-tone phone, like a friend's or the office phone, without it costing them anything. Public payphones might charge an extra couple of pence though.
Talk-UK allows you to buy international phone cards online at www.talk-uk.co.uk. Other companies that cater for southerners are Swiftcall, Communications 2000 and Telecom One.
Remember: to dial abroad from the UK, first dial 00 (the international access code), then your country code, followed by the number.
Mobile phones
There are thousands of different types of phones, each offering hundreds of different tariffs, in the UK. The trick is to pick the tariff that will best match your needs and lifestyle. If you're going to be making the majority of your calls during the day, for instance, then choose a tariff that offers low daytime charges. Alternatively, if you use your mobile phone more as a social tool in the evening, then your tariff should offer low evening call rates.
There are four mobile networks in the UK - BT Cellnet, Vodafone, Orange and One2One. Try to choose the same network as your friends as they all charge less for calls made to the same network
When a tariff offers free minutes don't be mistaken into thinking this includes all calls - in most cases the minutes will only be free for calls on the same network or calls made at certain times of the day.
If you are intending on using your mobile phone more for receiving call than making calls, the simplest option may be to buy a 'pay as you go' phone (ranging from £30-£80).
Pay as You Go packages work on (widely available) call vouchers that you can buy upfront so you will never get a bill. But calls are generally more expensive than with a subscription package.
One of the most prominent mobile dealers in the UK is Carphone Warehouse. Visit their website on www.carphonewarehouse.com for information on the latest deals and help with finding the right mobile for you.
E-mail
Probably the fastest and most convenient and definitely the cheapest way to keep in touch with your friends and loved ones is by e-mail. You won't struggle to find an Internet café in London, they are dotted all over the place and most offer a good cup of coffee and some snacks to keep you comfortable while you are online. But most of the small i-cafes are very expensive, charging on average about 4 an hour. The best option is to find your closest easyeverything store. They have up to 500 terminals and their rates fluctuate according to how busy they are. So while at peak times one pound might only buy you 30 minutes, you can buy up to four hours for a pound at quieter times. You get a login number when you buy your ticket and if you don't use up your time, you can log out and come back at a later stage (within 30 days) and use it up.
There are five easyeverything stores in London:
9-16 Tottenham Court Road, nearest tube: Tottenham Court Road
358 Oxford Street, nearest tube: Bond Street
9-13 Wilton Road, nearest tube: Victoria
160-166 Kensington High Street, nearest tube: High Street Kensington
456/459 Strand, nearest tube: Charring Cross
