Cheapest way to call Nigeria (Call Nigeria from UK)
We all love cheap things, don’t we? The most common question among Nigerians in the UK is, what is the cheapest way to call Nigeria from the UK?
The cheapest way to call Nigeria is to use an app on your phone.
Cheapest app to call Nigeria
The cheapest app you can use to call Nigeria is Rebtel.
Back in 2005 when I first arrived in the UK, we used a calling card to call Nigeria. I remember I would buy a card called “TalkHome”. It’s a scratch card containing some codes.
Every time you want to call, you have to dial the TalkHome number, enter the code from the scratch card followed by the Nigerian number you want to call.
I used to hate that process because it was a time consuming and frustrating process.
The card usually cost £5 with a promise of 100mins. Seriously, I don’t think you get 100 minutes from it. It’s very difficult to measure or see how many minutes you have used.
Later on, we got a TalkHome sim card that could be inserted into a phone.
That was better. However, I wasn’t ready to switch my original mobile number for the TalkHome sim card. The solution was to have a separate mobile phone specifically for international calls.
I was still not satisfied with the idea of having another phone. It’s just doesn’t make sense for me to carry two phones. I used to keep the second phone at home and only made calls to Nigeria when I am at home.
When I had urgent calls to Nigeria whenever I was not at home, I was forced to use my normal EE call plan which was very expensive.
I thought there would be a way to call Nigeria cheaply from my everyday phone. I contacted my provider EE for any plan that will enable me to call Nigeria cheap.
They offered me a separate plan which was an add-on to my existing plan. ‘The International: 50 countries’ plan which has Nigeria as one of the 50 countries to call cheap. It would cost me an additional £10 for 500mins.
I thought it was a good deal.
Actually, I was wrong, it was not a good deal for me. Here is the reason why.
I don’t really need 500 minutes in a month to call Nigeria. This means that my unused minutes are gone at the end of the month and I will still pay £10.
As well, there are now a lot of other ways to call Nigeria for free. An example is WhatsApp. The WhatsApp call feature is not perfect but it still gets the job done.
I mostly use WhatsApp to call and only use normal call when there is a network issue on WhatsApp or when I am calling a few people who are not available on WhatsApp.
I wanted something that is “pay as you go.”
Eventually, I found Rebtel which solved all the problems for me.
Why I love Rebtel
Save money
Rebtel offers a credit-based plan which means I do not have to sign up for a monthly plan. A monthly plan is annoying because you are sometimes paying for what you are not using. If I don’t make calls, my credit will still be in my Rebtel app.
Below is a chart that compares Rebtel with other providers in the UK.
Easy to use App
We now live in the age of technology and applications provide a lot of conveniences. Having an app that you can use to manage your credit and call really makes life easy when calling Nigeria or other countries.
VoIP service like Rebtel provides an easy opportunity to make phone calls from their app anywhere in the world where there is internet access.
The easy process of calling.
I remember those days of using call card. Calling now using Rebtel cannot be compared to those days. I cannot imagine some people are still calling Nigeria directly with from their network provider plans when there is an app like Rebtel.
