Cheapest way of making landline calls to mobile

Peig Sayers

Here's the story....my aunt is in a nursing home in the U.K. suffering from Alzheimers & Dementia . She has just moved to a new nursing home after her old one had to close. We used to phone her every week and the nurse would take the handsfree phone into her room so she could talk to us. Her new home is much bigger and we can't talk to her this way.

I bought her a retro 1960s rotary dial phone that takes a sim card (didn't want the nurses walking off with a mobile phone) that she will be able to easily answer. My question is is there any difference in mobile provider when it comes to the cost of making the calls from an Irish landline? Should I get an Irish or U.K. sim card?

Any ideas?

Davy

It depends on what plan you plan on making the calls from, some allow international calls etch or you could use Skype or similar

mistress_gi

Use a voip service. I use poivy and find it to be very good value. It even has an app you can install in your smartphone.
I have this and even use it on mobile internet.

Peig Sayers

The calls will be made from a landline.

Davy

Peig Sayers wrote: »

The calls will be made from a landline.

I seen that from the title but if its Vodafone upc eircom they are charge differently and then they each have different call plans which some would allow the calls for free and some wouldn't.

You need to find out exactly what plan is for the landline

Peig Sayers

Davy wrote: »

I seen that from the title but if its Vodafone upc eircom they are charge differently and then they each have different call plans which some would allow the calls for free and some wouldn't.

You need to find out exactly what plan is for the landline

The landline is with eircom and there are no call plans

ardmacha

It is worth clarifying that you are talking about a UK mobile here, which might not be good value at all.

If the nursing home has proper wifi or a wired connection, some type of "phone" operating on voip would be best, you could even give it an Irish number.

bugfreebob

Peig Sayers wrote: »

Here's the story....my aunt is in a nursing home in the U.K. suffering from Alzheimers & Dementia . She has just moved to a new nursing home after her old one had to close. We used to phone her every week and the nurse would take the handsfree phone into her room so she could talk to us. Her new home is much bigger and we can't talk to her this way.

I bought her a retro 1960s rotary dial phone that takes a sim card (didn't want the nurses walking off with a mobile phone) that she will be able to easily answer. My question is is there any difference in mobile provider when it comes to the cost of making the calls from an Irish landline? Should I get an Irish or U.K. sim card?

Any ideas?

A well kept secret not known to many is that Meteor offer free incoming calls when Roaming in Europe. Buy a pre-pay Meteor SIM and put it in your Aunts phone in UK. (You will need to activate free roaming by first putting the SIM in a mobile before going to UK and Texting “EUROPE” to 50104). As long as your Aunt just uses it for incoming, there won't be any call charges, and you just need to keep the SIM topped up occasionally - probably once every 6 months or so. You can top up remotely from Ireland using your online banking or via Meteor website. The cheapest option would be to also make the calls from a Meteor or eMobile phone in Ireland, as both offer free calls to all Meteor numbers. €10 every 6 months and you can talk to your Aunt as much as you like - and you don't even have to be at home!

However, if you really want to make the calls from your landline, eircom offer about 30 mobile minutes free on most of their bundles, but they have cheap add-on which for €2 a month gives you unlimited calls to Meteor/eMobile mobiles for 5c/minute. Hence you can make calls to your Aunt's Meteor number for a reasonable fee without having to incur the normal high cost of charges to UK mobiles.

I would strongly recommend that you don't use Skype or VOIP since the additional latency and the different user experience on these services can make communication very difficult for elderly or hard-of-hearing people. I think your idea of using a retro phone with a SIM card is excellent, and your Aunt was probably used to using old fashioned phones like the one you have chosen so she will be comfortable with this solution. Providing the coverage is good inside the Nursing Home, the quality of modern mobile networks is generally on par with good fixed line calls.

May you have many years of chatting to your Aunt without having to worry about the bills!