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Anorak News | Noodle For Cheap Mobile Abroad This Summer

Noodle For Cheap Mobile Abroad This Summer

by | 6th, August 2007

Noodle met with Helen Loveless last week. Helen is Personal Finance Editor for the Mail on Sunday. She knows her stuff.

She picked up on us for Noodle’s initial offer of a 6 month contract SIM for £4.95 / month. This offer has been substantially improved over the past few weeks – our minimum contract term is now 3 months and we’re shortly going to announce a deal for our contract SIM customers which ties in a Noodle home telephone service which will offer free unlimited UK land line calls to our customers using a carrier pre-select (CPS): an unprecedented deal amongst the UK’s MNOs and IMHO, outstanding value for our customers.

The meeting helped give rise to the Mail on Sunday article How to cut the cost of a mobile abroad.

Last month, an EU ruling limited how much providers can charge for ‘roaming calls’ – those made overseas. Currently mobile phone users pay between 50p and £1 to make a call and they are also charged to receive them.

The new legislation cuts the maximum charge for European calls to 33p a minute and to just 16p a minute to receive them.

But because providers do not legally have to offer the Eurotariff until the end of August, many are delaying, which means millions of holidaymakers will still pay far too much for international calls.

Under the ruling, all providers had to notify customers of the Eurotariff by the end of July, either by text or letter, and move those who respond on to the tariff by August 31.

I’d be interested to discover how many phone users didn’t receive notification. Did you?
You have to make the request. The onus is on the customer to know of the scheme and make contact with the company. Is this fair?

Helen writes:

But you can keep call costs down. Mobile phone firm Noodle offers a minimum three-month contract that it claims will allow customers to make international calls from as little as 8p a minute.

Contract customers pay £4.95 a month and receive a Sim card but no phone. They are then given an access code that is dialled before the number they want. This switches them to Noodle’s network and low-rate calls. Consumers on a contract elsewhere can still make cheap calls through Noodle by registering for a code on its website. This number is dialled as a prefix to access low-rate calls.

And it works:

Mark, who lives with girlfriend Angie and children Tallulah, 5, and Delilah, 1, in Uffington, Oxfordshire, was given a number that he used to prefix international calls. His bills soon dropped to about £50.

And it will work for you



Posted: 6th, August 2007 | In: Reviews Comment | TrackBack | Permalink