calls from scotland and offshore

[mollykins]

Scotland is part of great britain so I won't get charged extra for using my phone their to call home back in england?

Plus how far off of the coast do you have to be before calls are charged at international rates? Or would you lose signal first?

[Milvus]

Scotland is part of the UK so calls to England are normal tariff.
In order to be charged for international use you would need to be connected to a foreign cellular provider who will route your calls for you. For instance if you were crossing the channel to France there is a point where your signal will drop from your UK provider. As you get closer to the French coast your phone will access French providers. Choose one to switch to, and now you are on international roaming rates

[boxtops]

I'll endorse what milvus says, except that there are some parts of this Kent shoreline where the French signal is stronger than the UK provider, and you make phone calls are charged international rates. St Margaret's Bay, along the coast from here, is renowned for that - and several times I've been sitting on the train travelling the other way along the coast from here to Folkestone, when I've received a text saying "welcome to France".
As milvus says, make sure your phone provider has activated international roaming for you before you risk going outside UK signal range, otherwise you won't be able to use your phone at all in those areas.

[mollykins]

Thanks, how do I make sure I can use it? Having said that, we won't be going very far offshore as after a day or two we'll enter the scottish locks and river systems. So if we don't go very far wil I be ok?

[twix123]

Molly, you'll need to be a long way off the east coast of Scotland before you would get a signal from the Norwegian providers. If you're sailing off the west coast of Scotland you may get a signal from Northern Ireland, but you would still get the same providers as from the UK so there would be no extra charge.

Coverage in Scotland could possibly be intermittent due to the mountains and hills, together with the lack of areas of population, especially the further north you go!

[mollykins]

Hhmmmm I've jsut looked on the map at the two towns and I can't find a way there unless we go south (backwards) a bit and past dundee.

[mollykins]

Anyway we're going from the east to the north middle.