I have an unlocked 3GSM mobile phone in Australia. I take the phone with me when I travel to Thailand and have global roaming switched on before I leave Australia.

If I call a Thai landline or mobile number - the costs are high. If I make a call to Australia or receive a call from Australia, costs are huge.

In the past, I have bought a pre-paid Thai SIM card and used both in the dual-SIM phone, but I am looking for a way to reduce communications costs.

Today I came across MaxRoam, which bills itself as 'The SIM That Doesn't Know You Are Travelling. Travel Global - Pay Local. And your callers pay local too!'

Seemed too good to be true. I went to their How Much Does It Cost page and filled in: I am roaming in THAILAND and I am calling to AUSTRALIA. Per minute costs: Incoming calls 0.66 Euro, outgoing call to Australia 0.89 Euro, calling a local mobile phone in Thailand 0.73 Euro.

Certainly not cheap. Telstra charges almost as much. Has anybody found a cheap, reliable way of calling Australia from Thailand?

Peter

Skype (compatible or smart) phones on a wifi point.. As soon as we get a 3g network this becomes a reality.. Combined with skypein numbers this gets really pretty clever. I havent yet really tried the Skype systems for mobile on edge ?? Any reports ??

Next best that I know of is simply to use a local number and set up voicemail giving it to people back on home numbers.. At least this way they pay the international fees to call you, not the other way around.

My buddy bought one of those 'worldphone' sims similar in promo to what your talking about.. I actually dug out the rates he was paying and it was more expensive for international calls than a local Thai number.. From my brief skim of it, it was basically a marketing spiel with minor savings.

Hard to figure how you can get any more cost-effective than a local, pre-paid SIM?

outgoing calls to Australia via 009: 7 baht/min. (7.49 with VAT)

local calls: 3 baht/min or less (various promotions available)

in-coming call from OZ: free, caller pays (if a problem, don't answer, then ring them back)

Personally I carry two phones: Home Phone and Local SIM Phone, and always use my "local SIM phone" for the bulk of my communications requirements.

edited to add: I haven't used SKYPE over GPRS/EDGE but it could work in theory. AIS are offering Push-to-Talk (PTT) services using VoIP over EDGE here in Thailand.

Edited February 16, 200818 yr by lomatopo

Prepaid local SIM card, 50 baht.

Local pinless calling card service, using callback to call Australia land line, 1 baht to 1.5 baht depending on which service you select.

Exactly how cheap do you want it? If you care about price, the above is the way to go. If you want convenience, pay the $2 per minute.

Me? When I travel I carry 2 mobile phones. 1 roaming, 1 local SIM. Get the caller ID on the roaming phone, cancel the call, and then call people back on the local SIM.

Hard to beat that really. And you don't have to worry about telling all your friends your local number. Just call them back.

Also nice to have a duosim adapter.. Switch between networks and no messing around..