According to the Money Saving Expert Call Checker, the cheapest way to call a Philippines mobile is around 7.15p/min plus a connection fee (13.1p with BT). This is by dialling an 0871 number to route your call, so you will get charged even if your call is not answered! If you have free calls to 0845 numbers during weekdays you can call the Philippines for free by using www.precaller.co.uk You build up credit (2 units/min) by calling an 0845 number. Once you have sufficient credit, you can then make your call to the Philippines at a rate of 9 units/min). You do this via a UK 020 access number, so make sure you call when calls to UK numbers are free from your land-line or mobile. If you cannot get free 0845 calls, you can sign up with www.dialnow.com and can make calls to Philippines mobiles for just 5.6p/min and with no call connection fee.The best way to do this is with a smartphone app from DialNow, allowing you to route calls over your WiFi connection. If you have an inclusive call package with your land-line/mobile provider you can also use DialNow via a UK 020 access number and avoid the access number call charge. DialNow has great rates for other countries too.
Call your Mahal on a UK Phone Number! It is now very easy to get and set-up a 'virtual' UK phone number which can be 'pointed' to any phone in the world. You can set up a UK virtual phone number so that all calls to that number go to your Mahal's phone in the Philippines. Currently, the cheapest provider of UK 'virtual' numbers is probably Flextel**. You can buy a 'virtual' phone number from as little as £1 (depending on area code) There are no ongoing rental charges and the only requirement to keep the phone number in operation is to make one call to that number each year. Of course, there are call routing charges involved, but routing calls from a Flextel UK virtual number to the Philippines can be as low as 5.6p/min (incl. VAT) to land-lines/mobiles using www.dialnow.com. These per minute charges can be avoided if the called party in the Philippines were lucky enough to have unlimited broadband/WiFi in the Philippines; you would just route calls to a 'SIP' address (which is free), rather than to a real phone number. The service also comes with free voice-mail via e-mail so that your Mahal's relatives can pick up your messages whenever they have access to their e-mail account. You could of course, set up the whole system as a voice-mail only service which would be entirely free if you have an inclusive UK calls package. If anyone is interested in this, I can provide more details. **I know that Sipgate will provide free UK virtual numbers but you are then stuck with using Sipgate to route calls and they are not the cheapest for calls. With Flextel, you can use whichever provider is the cheapest to route calls, making it the cheapest overall.
First, of all, we are in the Philippines. Without going into detailed explanation, you can call us for free - some sort of a demo call - if you can make a local call to any of these numbers in UK (click this link PSTN Access Numbers). Then after hearing the recorded message, dial this sequence "*462+17772220029 + #". Then we can talk how we can duplicate this in your Philippine home. By the way, our PLDT phone number is (63-32)340-18097 if you're still skeptic.
There is now a very cheap way to call The Philippines from a mobile phone! Just 3p/min to Philippines Landlines and mobiles! You will need to get a Lycamobile PAYG SIM card (it is free)... http://www.lycamobile.co.uk/en/ I have not tried the service yet but, in the UK, it uses the O2 network. If you don't want to change your existing provider just use a second handset or the spare slot if you have a dual SIM phone. With a Lycamobile SIM card you can even transfer a load to Philippine SIM cards. Very useful, especially if you are in hospital!
Thanks a lot, Howerd. Their rates have come down a lot and are similar to Thailand now. I will get one soon.
It's always worked well Mike, been using that mechanism pretty much since Skype was invented in 2005, however as Howerd points out there are alternatives that are cheaper. However one should also realise that data is not as expensive in the Phils as it is here, you can get a fairly large data allowance for pretty small money and you can also just go payg data which is about 10 peso for 30 minutes and that is un-metered data so you could in theory call Skype to Skype on a modern smartphone for next to nothing, my work has a 6GB data plan on the phones they provide (6GB per person per month) that's the UK allowance and on that basis you don't need to worry about UK data volume, so Skype to Skype becomes practical phone to phone for a price at the far end of 10 peso for 30 minutes. That does require discipline at the far end which means switching off data on the phone when the call is over, and finding a way to signal to the other party that you are about to make a call to them but that can all be done cheaply now too.
Skype and other similar VOIP solutions are good, as long as you have decent internet connections at both ends. Quality can range from excellent to intolerable, the Philippine mobile networks are not the best when you get away from the major cities. But well worth a try, definitely better than it used to be.
If you decide on the VOIP route, I suggest getting virtual phone numbers for both ends. This could be a Google Voice number (there are ways of getting Google Voice numbers outside of the USA) but my personal preference would be virtual UK numbers from flextel.com for use both in the UK and the Philippines. This would give the flexibility of VOIP combined with a UK phone number. If you have inclusive calls to UK landlines from your UK landline or UK mobile, that means you can make calls to the Philippines for free from the UK. Your mahal in the Philippines could have a UK number so that she could be contacted by anyone - not just those with internet connections. Just remember to register the number with the Telephone Preference Service (TPS) so that she does not get UK marketing calls!
