Florida Villa

Mobile phones in Florida – Florida phone calls – Call cards

For a European / UK phone to work in Florida is has to be a Tri band or Quad band phone. Also you need to enable international roaming before you leave home. Best to check with your operator that your phone will work and is enabled.

Once connected to a US network, you will get a text message from them detailing the service, most take into account what country you are travelling from and take care of all the international codes for you. So if you were dialling the UK from Florida on your mobile phone you would use the same number as you would in the UK.

Top Tip – Mobile Phone = Cell Phone in Florida

Remember although slowly getting cheaper it’s still expensive to dial internationally on mobile phones, it’s a good idea to check the rates before you leave home.

If you are travelling abroad for the 1st time with your mobile phone, don’t forget how the charging model works! You pay for the incoming portion of the call, in other words it costs you to make and receive calls.

If you have a big party of say two families, (we quite often have 2 families stay in our villa as it sleeps 11 people) and you want to keep in contact through the day in the parks, then buy an American prepay phone.

We bought 2 prepay phones in Wal-Mart for $19.99 each with $10 credit on each phone, the plan was great you can make unlimited calls between mobiles on same tariff and to local numbers. So for $40 (£20, €28) you have 2 phones with 10 days worth of free mobile and local calls. Check out the supermarkets for the best deals.
I know it’s a waste but quite often the phones deactivate after 3 months of not connecting to the network, so you may have to throw them away at the end of your stay, check the agreement.
If you compare the costs between American Pay as you go phones to calling each other on UK phones at £1 per minute you will make massive savings, and stay in contact all day for $1 per phone per day.

Phoning home
The best and cheapest way to do this is to buy an international prepay card in a supermarket such as Wal-Mart, these work on any phone (they work on our villa phone) prices to the UK can be 5-10 cents per minute which is very good value. Normally buy $10, or $20 cards.