Mobile Phones
Mobile phones are an essential fashion accessory in Greece, which has the highest per-capita usage in Europe outside of Italy - in a population of roughly 11 million, there are claimed to be 6.5 million mobile handsets in use. There are three networks at present: Panafon-Vodafon, Telestet and Cosmote. Calling any of them from Britain, you will find that costs are exactly the same as calling a fixed phone - so you won't need to worry about ringing them when given as alternative numbers for accommodation - though of course such numbers are pricey when rung locally. Coverage countrywide is fairly good, though there is a number of "dead" zones in the shadows of mountains, or on really remote islets. Pay-as-you-go , contract-free plans are heavily promoted in Greece (such as Telestet B-Free and Panafon-Vodafon A La Carte), and if you're going to be around for a while - for example, studying, or working for a season in the tourist industry - an outlay of ?90 or less will see you to a decent apparatus and your first calling card. This lasts up to a year - even if you use up your talk time you'll still have an incoming number, along with a voice-mail service. Top-up calling cards - predicted to be in denominations of ?6, ?15 and ?18 depending on the network - are available at all periptera . If you want to use your home-based mobile abroad , you'll need to check with your phone provider whether it will work. North American users will only be able to use tri-band rigs in Greece. Any GSM mobile from the UK, Australia or New Zealand should work fine in Greece. In the UK, for all but the very top-of-the-range packages, you'll have to inform your service network before going abroad to get international access (" roaming ") switched on. You may get charged extra for this depending on the terms of your package and where you are travelling to. You are also likely to be charged extra for incoming calls when abroad, as the people calling you will be paying the usual rate; discount plans are available to reduce the cost of forwarding the call to you overseas by as much as seventy percent. If you want to retrieve messages while you're away, you'll have to ask your provider for a new access number, as your home one (or one-stroke "mail" key) is unlikely to work abroad. In terms of call charges , experience (and examining UK-based bills) has shown that the local network that you select out of the three local networks makes little difference: depending on the length of the call, chat back to the UK (including voice-mail retrieval) works out at GBP0.49-55 per minute; ringing land-lines within Greece is GBP0.23-0.26 per minute; and calling Greek mobiles ranges from GBP0.30 to 0.43 per minute - all significantly more than using a cardphone, but worth it to most for the convenience and privacy.
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Your Tip for Greece
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