International Communication Whilst in the UK

While living in Britain, the best ways of staying in touch with friends and family back home are obviously via email and over the phone.

Email

Cyber Cafes are abundant in the UK and the serial entrepreneur Stelios Haji-Iounnou (founder of EasyJet and many other Easy enterprises) has opened a string of Easy internet cafes which are good, reasonably priced places to go and are now found in most major cities throughout the UK.

The real bargain which most Britons know about but few visitors do is that access to the internet and hence email is free in all public libraries throughout Britain. In many - such as in Birmingham city centre - there are computers that are set-aside for all to use without pre-booking. On the other hand, time is often limited to around 15 minutes on these so not too useful if planning to write to lots of people.

Others, such as Putney Public Library in London, make you reserve a computer in advance (I suppose you could turn up on the off-chance that one is not in use); the advantage pre-booking is that you may log-on for 30 minutes or more and can be certain that you will be given access to a computer.

Of course, like most libraries, the daily newspapers can be found and read for free. Some of the larger libraries even stock international papers.

Telephone

Phone cards are more abundant than ever before. They are sold in supermarkets, WH Smith's, the Post Office and most independent newsagents.

It took me a while to learn that the best deals are not found in the high-street stores and supermarkets. Some costing £5 would only last around 90 minutes - even less when used from a public payphone or the free phone number.

The best deals are found in the independent newsagents - especially in culturally diverse areas. In Bradford, I repeatedly bought £5 calling cards for £3.50 from the local newsagent. These cards gave me around 360 minutes talk time with unlimited talk time to the USA and Canada after 9pm.

The downside with all the phone cards is that they expire a month after first being used. Anyway, like the old BT ads used to say: "it's good to talk" (hopefully with this advice it'll be longer and for less).

BY: Sam