London (Fodor's 2012) - Fodor's [225]
The United Kingdom is finally catching up to the United States in terms of the spread of broadband and Wi-Fi. In London, free Wi-Fi is increasingly available in hotels, pubs, coffee shops—even certain branches of McDonald’s—and broadband coverage is widespread; generally speaking, the pricier the hotel, the more likely you are to find Wi-Fi there. To find your nearest free hot spot, see the Wi-Fi FreeSpot Web site.
Contacts Cybercafes (www.cybercafes.com) lists more than 4,000 Internet cafés worldwide. My Hot Spot (www.myhotspost.co.uk).
PHONES
The good news is that you can now make a direct-dial telephone call from virtually any point on earth. The bad news? You can’t always do so cheaply. Calling from a hotel is almost always the most expensive option; hotels usually add huge surcharges to all calls, particularly international ones. Calling cards usually keep costs to a minimum, but only if you purchase them locally. And then there are mobile phones, which are sometimes more prevalent—particularly in the developing world—than landlines; as expensive as mobile phone calls can be, they are still usually a much cheaper option than calling from your hotel.
The minimum charge from a public phone is 60p for a 110-second call. To make cheap calls it’s a good idea to pick up an international phone card, available from newsstands, which can be used from residential, hotel, and public pay phones. With these, you can call the United States for as little as 5p per minute.
To dial from the United States or Canada, first dial 011, then Great Britain’s country code, 44. Continue with the local area code, dropping the initial “0.” The code for London is 020 (so from abroad you’d dial 20), followed by a 7 for numbers in central London, or an 8 for numbers in the Greater London area. Freephone (toll-free) numbers start with 0800, 0500 or 0808; low-cost national information numbers start with 0845 or 0844.
A word of warning: 0870 numbers are not toll-free numbers; in fact, numbers beginning with this, 0871, or the 0900 prefix are “premium rate” numbers, and it costs extra to call them. The amount varies and is usually relatively small when dialed from within the country but can be excessive when dialed from outside the United Kingdom.
Calling Within Britain
There are three types of phones: those that accept (1) only coins, (2) only British Telecom (BT) phone cards, or (3) BT phone cards and credit cards, although with the advent of cells, it’s increasingly difficult to find any type of public phone, especially in London.
The coin-operated phones are of the push-button variety; the workings of coin-operated telephones vary, but there are usually instructions on each unit. Most take 10p, 20p, 50p, and £1 coins. Insert the coins before dialing (the minimum charge is 10p). If you hear a repeated single tone after dialing, the line is busy; a continual tone means the number is unobtainable (or that you have dialed the wrong—or no—prefix). The indicator panel shows you how much money is left; add more whenever you like. If there is no answer, replace the receiver and your money will be returned.
There are several different directory-assistance providers. For information anywhere in Britain, try dialing 118–888 (49p per call, then 9p per minute) or 118–118 (49p per call, then 14p per minute); you’ll need to know the town and the street (or at least the neighborhood) of the person or organization for which you’re requesting information. For the operator, dial 100.
You don’t have to dial London’s central area code (020) if you are calling inside London itself—just the eight-digit telephone number. However, you do need to use it if you’re dialing an 0207 (Inner London) number from an 0208 (Outer London) number, and vice versa.
For long-distance calls within Britain, dial the area code (which begins with 01), followed by the number. The area-code prefix is used only when you are dialing from outside