I'm off to Cape Town - need some advice!

[Guest ma77smith]

Hi Folks,

I'm off to Cape Town in 5 weeks for two months and need some advice on how I can use my phone to ANSWER calls without being charged a small fortune.

I'm with Orange UK on a premier 400 tariff and it will cost me £0.80 per minute to receive a call. :shock:

I have been in touch with orange and they do an international 'pack' where you buy a bundle of international minutes before you go, it's hardly any cheaper (about 5%) than normal and still an absolute rip off.

I'm a self emplyed IT guy and it's very important that people can get hold of me for advice, troubleshooting etc. But as you can imagine at 80 pence per minute I could come back to a £800+ phone bill :roll:

It isn't important for me to make calls only to receive and I really need to find a way to make this cheaper. I had an idea to get a South african pay as you go phone and leave my orange phone in the uk and just forward all calls to it - but I'm not sure whether this would be any cheaper or not.

If anyone out there knows a method to make this cheaper or free then I will buy you a beer :o

[Guest TigerNet]

...have you thought about using Spinvox. This service replaces your voicemail. The caller leaves a message which is translated into a text message and an e-mail...this way you only pay for the text message, not the call...you can then reply as needed...

Cheers

Nick