Mobile/Cell Phones

Hi All:

I've finally arrived in Edinburgh and beginning to look into getting a mobile (we already have a land-line). There seems to be an incredible amount of providers/companies out there, does anyone have any advice or insight on who we should go with, fine print cautions etc?

The big companies are Orange, Vodafone, O2 (sure there's a couple others I can't think of).

Do you want pay as you go or a contract? I've been on pay as you go for 8 years - you can get pretty cheap handsets now and I don't make enough phone calls to warrant £30 a month. A couple things that are different from Canada here - one, your money doesn't expire on your phone (in Canada, you have to top up the pay as you go every month or lose all the money), and you don't get charged for incoming calls.

If you have some friends you'll want to call, find out what networks they are on - it is always more expensive to call another network. That's the reason I went with Orange, because all my friends are on it. However, the other important thing is coverage - unfortunately some networks are good in some areas and some are good in others. My Orange phone does not work very well in my flat, but my (work) Vodafone one does. But I have been other places where Orange works and Vodafone doesn't. So you may want to ask people around you what they are using. But I never had problems in Edinburgh with coverage.

dude, try going to any convenience store or malls and you can get information very accurate.. that is the least and best thing to do if you ask me.