pippyrips

I am right in saying you need a tri band mobile phone in order for it to work in Austraila and New Zealand?

Is it best to take a phone over from this country and use a uk sim card or to buy one over there? As mentioned above i need it to be able to make and recieve calls in both Auz and NZ.

Cheers.

WREXY

Tri is enough for oz. Oz networks operate on 1800. Dont know about New Zealand. Get a pre paid sim in OZ. Im in Oz at the mo and bought a vodafone pre paid card for $79 AUD. You get $500 worth of free calls but you have to use it in a month. It equales 12 to 13 hours worth of calls to oz phones.

If youtake a sim from the UK you will be charged for calls made to you which gets very expensive.

Beastie

iTrader: (2)

Obviously to use a local sim card your mobile needs to be unlocked so that it can accept any sim card. If you buy a local card then on PAYG then you need to handle the top ups but incoming calls will be free. Using your UK sim card can incur heavy charges for receiving calls depending on what network you are on. For Orange see here Orange - costs and services
that is for PAYG for contract phone see here Orange - costs and services

If you want to keep in touch with a UK PAYG then make sure you top it up heavily before you travel. If you have a contract mobile make sure you have enabled international roaming.

Use this link to check if your mobile is actually going to work in Oz Orange - will my mobile work?

When i travel i usually take two phones and buy a local sim card so that i can phone people back on the local one after they phone me on the uk one.

Also worthy of note is the travel sim which i also have used in the past this is one i have used succesfully but there are others An international SIM card with no roaming charges that works in over 100 countries

Hope this helps and Happy New Year to you WREXY!

KiwiGTI

Prepay – Connections - Vodafone NZ Online Shop

pippyrips

Spot on Wrexy - very helpful. Its for my parents who are doing Auz/NZ over the course of 3 weeks.

Is there one method that will work in both countries? i.e. buying a sim in NZ that will also work in Auz or would they need to get an unlocked tri band phone and buy a local sim in each country?

Thanks again.

ScoTTyB

I use calling cards from Calling Cards & Phone Cards. Prepaid Long-Distance & International Calls, VoIP, Telecommunication Services., basically you dial a local number and then route it through the calling card, it's much cheaper than just calling direct.

pippyrips

cheers Scotty.

So just to get this striaght i need:

1 triband phone unlocked to any network

1 pre paid local sim in both Auz and NZ?

RRH

I went to carphone warehouse and bought the cheapest phone I could find- which was a motorola znasty or something similar. appalling but cheap.

I also acquired a 'worldsim' from World SIM free roaming International SIM Cards. Global SIM cards.WorldSIM card. BizSIM Cards. Travel sim cards with free messenging and incoming calls at WorldSIM.Com as I needed to receive incoming calls from the UK but didn't want to pay for them. The call cost to uk callers is the same as to any uk mobile and will use the callers inclusive minutes.

As soon as I got to oz I bought a voda payg sim for dialling out- and used the worldsim for incoming. If you're prepared to carry two phones and need to receive incoming then this is about the best way to go without getting in to VOIP.

Klaatu

Yup, that'll be your most flexible option. (I've lived in both countries and have used Vodafone too). In Australia you will need some form of ID, like a passport, to activate your SIM either by phone or via the internet. In NZ I think, from memory, you can get it activated at the shop. But I would not be surprised to hear this has all changed in both countries now, I have had nothing but problems with Telco's in Aus. I've been waiting more than 3 weeks to get a home phone and ADSL.

RRH

I managed to register mine from an address I 'found' on google. If you buy an Oz sim from ebay in the uk they will usually steer you around the pitfalls.

I bought mine from these guys eBay UK Shop - experimentalist: Global Sim Cards, Australian, New Zealand - they were really helpful.

Klaatu

Interesting. He's in NZ, I wonder how trade was affected by Dr Haneef and the Glasgow Airport attacks?