The international access code from the UK is 00. So you dial, for example, 00 33 to reach France, 00 1 for almost all of North America, or 00 61 for Australia.
To phone home you may find it easier to use a home country direct service, using a free number which will connect you directly to an operator in your home country. These numbers are listed in the BT phone books. This is usually the most convenient, but not the cheapest, way to phone home if you are visiting the UK.
The country code is 44, and you need to drop the leading 0 from area codes. So for example to dial a London number (area code 020) from abroad you will need to dial +44 20, then the rest of the number, where + represents your own international access code. From North America this would become 011 44 20, from most of the rest of Europe it would become 00 44 20. You will sometimes see numbers written as +44 20 or +44 (0) 20, where the + represents your international code.
Most payphones in Britain are operated by BT, and will take coins and usually credit cards. Prepaid BT phone cards are no longer available. The phones generally have a display which shows you how much credit you have and many also now offer Internet access. All phone calls are timed: the longer you stay on the phone, the more you need to pay. The cost varies considerably according to the time of day and where you are calling to. The cost from a standard payphone will be the same for the equivalent call, whether you pay by coin or pre-paid card. There is a 20p minimum charge for coin, or prepaid card, calls from payphones.
Coin phones will usually return coins that you have not used, but will not actually give change. So if you make a call costing 45p, and put a single £ 1 coin in at the start, you will not get anything returned. But if you were to build up the same credit using two 50p coins, you would be returned one of the coins. If you want to make a second call without losing your credit, do not hang up at the end of the first one. Instead press the 'follow-on call' button to get a dial tone.
There is a 50p minimum charge for credit card calls which can make credit cards uneconomic for short local calls. Payphones in public places do have numbers and will take incoming calls, so you can ask somebody to call you back if you are short of change.
There are various pre-paid cards offered by third-party suppliers - in effect you dial a free number and then provide your card details. These can offer very attractive deals for international calls, but beware that this is sometimes at the cost of very expensive calls within the UK.
There is now a range of competing services, with varying prices and all with numbers starting in 118. Most of these will offer services such as sending the number in a text message to a mobile phone, or connecting the call for you, but asking a directory enquiry service to complete the call is likely to be more expensive than dialling it yourself.
Both the phone book (you will need to select directory enquiries from the menu that appears) and yellow pages are also available on the web.
There are a number of payphone operators whose rates undercut those of BT - most of these take coins and credit cards only. There are also payphones in private premises which charge considerably more than the standard rate - one of the less pleasant effects of deregulation is that payphones on private premises can charge as much as they like.
Numbers that start in 0800, or occasionally 0808, are free from a UK land-line. You can phone free numbers in the UK from abroad, but your call will be charged at the same rate as any other call to the UK. Depending on your network and type of phone, you may be charged for calls from mobile phones to these numbers. There are a few genuine international free numbers, reached by dialling 00800.
Numbers starting in 0845 are charged as local calls from anywhere in the country. Numbers starting in 0870 are charged as national that is, non-local, calls from anywhere.
The 071 area code changed to 0171 a few years ago. Most geographical area codes had a '1' added after the initial '0', so 0223 for Cambridge became 01223, 031 for Edinburgh became 0131, and so on. A few areas had completely new numbers allocated starting in 01.
From 2000, the 02 range was brought into use for geographical area codes. This means that numbers in London, Northern Ireland, and a few other places have changed - the third change in ten years for London. The 0171 and 0181 area codes were be replaced by a single 020 area code, and a 7 or an 8 added to the start of the local number. So for example (0171) 477 xxxx is now (020) 7477 xxxx.
Yes, provided that it uses the GSM (Global System for Mobiles) standard and a frequency of 900 and/or 1800. You may need to ensure that your provider at home has set up your phone to allow roaming. Vodafone, O2 (formerly BT Cellnet), Orange, and T-mobile (formerly One2One) are the four networks. When you are using a GSM phone outside your home country, you will be charged for the international leg of any incoming calls.
Visitors from North America should note that GSM is not widely used in the US or Canada, and that GSM networks there use a different frequency. Some multi-frequency phones which include both North American and European frequencies are available
My hotel says that it charges me 12p per unit. What does this mean?
Until recently domestic and business phone customers had their calls metered as a certain number of units, where each unit cost 5p including VAT. The term no longer appears on phone bills, but is still often used by hotels to refer to 5p worth of phone time. How long you get for a unit varies according to the time of day and where you are phoning to.
There are payphones on most InterCity trains, but they are expensive and the sound quality is poor. You can of course use a mobile phone on a train though a few operators have designated 'no mobile phones' areas.
Phones, other than payphones, are connected to the network using a socket which is almost unique to the UK. You can get adaptors, for modems for example, from many electrical stores. Until the early 1980s all phones in the UK were hard-wired into the network and you may still occasionally see hard-wired domestic phones.
On most single-line phones, if you dial 1471 you will hear a synthesised voice giving you the number of the last person who called you, and when they called. At present international calls and some others, such as those using a calling card, come across with the caller's number being unavailable.
You can withhold your number, simply by dialling 141 before the number you are calling. This will prevent the person you are calling finding out your number, by dialling 1471 or if they have a caller display phone. Or you can ask the company that operates your phone line to withhold your number on all calls.
Last modified 27 August 2003