Avoiding Roaming Costs as an International Student

Monday 29 March 2010

We all love our mobile phones, they provide such a high level of convenience that most people do not want to go without them. However, although you may travel well, its most likely that your existing mobile phone provider and contract in your home country will not travel well with you. As any traveler will tell you, when you use your mobile phone abroad you will be hit with high roaming charges that can really start to add up if you use your phone for any length of time.

To avoid any surprises in your phone bill, there are a few things you can do to minimize your costs and make sure you have the best calling options available to you. Before you travel abroad, you should:

1.     Call Current Provider – before you leave, you should call your current phone provider and find out firstly if you can use your phone abroad, secondly find out what the charges will be (so there will be no surprises if you do end up using your phone) and thirdly ask if your phone is locked or unlocked, and if the latter you should request your phone unlock code. If they do not provide this to you, there are many sources online to unlock your phone – Google Search is a good start!

2.     Do Some Research – after calling your provider, you will most likely find out that your charges when abroad are going to be high. The best way to avoid this is to purchase a sim card for the country you are traveling to, this way you will have a local number, cheap calls locally and depending on the country you are traveling to, you may have free inbound calls.

3.     International Calls – of course, if you are traveling, you will want to be calling home and people around the world. The best and cheapest way to do this is through a VOIP solution such as Skype and Gizmo which you can run for free on your laptop, and will offer low cost rates per minute to countries around the world. If you do not have access to a laptop, consider purchasing an international calling card, or a sim card with international calling services built in. It may be slightly more expensive, but will be very easy as you can call directly from your mobile phone. Please also be aware that when using a calling card from a prepaid phone, you will be using up your prepaid credit and your international calling credit.

Hopefully with these few simple steps, you will be able to avoid the high roaming charges that most providers will impose on you when you travel abroad. If you need a range of sim cards, we have a range available that can be purchased online quickly and easily. For example our T-Mobile USA Sim Card offers some excellent benefits and can be delivered anywhere in the world!

Student Visa Clampdown Confirmed for the UK

The new visa rules that emerged last month for the UK were unveiled Wednesday (10th February 2010) by the home secretary Alan Johnson. There were large concerns that the new proposed rule changes would impact English language schools, as it would increase the level of english required by applicants to a level that would rule out most students who come to the UK to study English.

The new rules to the “Points Based UK Visa System” was partially in response to a scam where older international female students were applying as a student to also bring in their husbands to the UK as dependents, and as such the changes are as follows:

1.     Require overseas students to have higher standards of English (the equivalent of just below GCSE),

2.     Halving the amount of time students can work each term-time week to 10 hours

3.     Banning dependents of anyone studying for less than six months.

The new changes, however, will not only affect English Language Schools as University Vice-Chancellors are also now concerned about this affect on university funding. At the moment international students are a major source of funding for universities in the UK, and these new changes, along with the suspension of visa applications in India due to a recent large surge at the tail end of last year – could see a large drop in the numbers of international students in the UK.

To read the full original article and for more information about the visa changes, please see the Guardian story.

Are you an international student trying to apply to the UK? Or are you concerned by these new regulations – post your comments below and let us know what you think!

British Council warns UK Universities

The British Council has warned UK Universities not to treat foreign or international students as “cash cows” as recruitment drives pick up by schools in the UK to attract more students from abroad. The stark warning comes as declining budgets mean that Universities are looking at other avenues with which increase their cash flow. International Students are one way that most Universities are looking to increase their revenues and plug the gap from falling budgets – as most can and will charge international students full tuition fees.

The British Council fears that the new attention to aggressively recruit foreign students will undermine the reputation of higher education learning in the UK. British Council chief executive Martin Davidson said: “It would be seriously counter-productive and, in the long run, potentially self-defeating, for universities to focus on intensifying student recruitment drives as a knee-jerk reaction to current financial difficulties and state funding cuts.

“International students have more study options today than ever before, and in an internet-connected world word quickly spreads when it appears a university regards them as little more than ‘cash cows’.

new visa rules threaten uk english language schools

English as a second language is a thriving industry in the UK, with an estimate 600,000 students traveling to the UK each year to study. More than half of these also then go on to higher education courses – and for this reason the English Language industry brings in over £1.5bn to the British economy each year.

However, the booming industry has some major concerns regarding the new points based visa system. Brought into use back in April 2009, the new points based system was originally designed to close down bogus colleges and institutions – and for a large part the system succeeded. However there were still concerns that the system could be abused, and at the tail end of 2009, the UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown ordered a review of the system in order to tighten it up.

This review led to new proposals being put forward to raise both the level study and the standard of English for any applicant coming into the UK on the points based system. Although this new proposal will almost certainly remove further abuses of the system, it will also certainly exclude all students who want to come into the UK for six months or more to develop their English skills from a basic level.

Philip Hopkins, principal of the English Language Centre in Brighton, says that if the government’s proposals come into force, about 40% of the school’s business would be wiped out. “We are an educational charity founded in 1962 and many of the students we get for long-term courses are students who go on to a foundation, undergraduate or master’s programme and will be in the UK education system for the next four or five years.”

Clearly the UK Government needs to review their current proposals, otherwise we could see some serious knock-on effects to the English Language sector in the UK. For more information about this article please see the original news source at the Guardian Newspaper.

UK Visa Rules May Not Hit UAE Students

Monday 1 March 2010

DUBAI -- The United Kingdom's plans to introduce tougher rules to prevent abuse of student visas is unlikely to affect the flow of visitors from the UAE, according to a British Embassy official here on Sunday.

The official said students from the Emirates had nothing to fear from the new rules, which British Home Secretary Alan Johnson had said was part of a wider crackdown on immigrants entering the country on student visas even though they intended to work there.''Genuine students (from the UAE) will have nothing to fear from any changes to the visa procedures,'' said British Embassy spokesman Simon Goldsmith.

Last year, 2,400 students from the UAE joined British universities to pursue their higher education.

Goldsmith sought to put to rest any confusion among students, and said, ''The UK will always be a great place to further your education.''He said the United Kingdom valued its relationship with the UAE and was looking forward to building on those ties. ''We welcome visitors from the Emirates to the UK, be they visitors, businessmen or students.''

Going further, he said, ''The exchange of people is in all our interest and I hope they have a memorable stay.''Earlier, speaking on the BBC's Andrew Marr Show, Home Secretary Johnson denied the system had been soft on immigrants. "By 2011, we will have the most sophisticated system in the world to check people not just coming into the country but to check they have left as well," he said.

The Home Secretary said his country was still open to those students who came for legitimate study. The tighter controls could also help to tackle security concerns over militants who enter Britain ostensibly to study. Analysts have warned for years of a threat from militants based at British universities, including foreigners on student visas.

The issue climbed back up the political agenda last month when it emerged that the Nigerian man accused of plotting to blow up a passenger plane over Detroit tried to re-enter Britain last April to study at a bogus college.

Khaleej Times Report