Home phone Guides

Cheap calls to Dubai

Updated: Tuesday 17 January, 2012

By Anthony Hill - anthony.hill@consumerchoices.co.uk

If you’ve got friends or family living in Dubai, your monthly phone bills are probably being hit by expensive international call rates. Switching to a new landline provider may save you money though - take a look at the table below for some competitive deals…

Provider	Package name		Dubai call rate (per minute)		Monthly package cost		Line rental cost
	Vonage V-Plan 2		19p		£8.99		£9.99	Go
	Talk UK Anytime		76.1p		£6.21		£13.80	Go
	Anytime Saver Offer		51.21p		£2.95		£11.22	Go
	Primus Home Phone Max		24p		£2.79		£10	Go

Phoning your friends and family in the United Arab Emirates can be costly if you don’t have the right call plan. For example, if you have the Weekend Calls tariff from BT (www.bt.com), calling Dubai will cost you 76p per minute for calls made during weekdays (7am - 7pm) and 61p per minute at all other times. So a 10-minute call during the day will set you back £7.72, including the 13.1p one-off call connection fee.

If you want to save on your calls though, you should consider switching to a different provider who offers cheaper call rates. Ask yourself these questions first:

• Apart from Dubai, do I call any other countries?
• Do I call landlines in the United Arab Emirates and/or mobiles?
• How long do I usually chat for?
• What are calls to Dubai costing me at the moment?

Look at some recent phone bills and work out how much you’re spending on international phone calls, then compare home phone deals online to see if you could save money by switching to a cheaper call plan.

Make calls to Dubai with your landline provider

Unfortunately none of the main UK home phone providers offer free calls to landlines in Dubai, however many have discounted rates and deals that can help you save money on your monthly bills.

Consider switching to the Primus Home Phone Max package, which offers free calls to UK local and national landlines and charges customers just 24p per minute to call landlines in Dubai during the day - a saving of over 50p a minute compared to BT’s international rates. The Home Phone Max package costs £2.79 a month, and line rental is £10 a month, if you sign-up online through Homephonechoices.co.uk.

YourCalls.net (www.yourcalls.net) also offers discounted calls to the United Arab Emirates if you choose the country as your “Golden Destination”. The Golden Destination deal from YourCalls.net lets all customers choose one country which they call most frequently to receive a discount on call charges. For example, calls to Dubai usually cost 51.21p per minute during the day, however with Dubai selected as your Golden Destination, calls will cost just 22.03p per minute during the day, 21.7p in the evenings and 21.65p at the weekend.

Making cheap calls to Dubai using the internet

If you’ve got a broadband connection at home, you could also make cheap calls to Dubai over the internet. Using an internet phone provider (VoIP), such as Vonage (www.vonage.co.uk), could help reduce your landline bills.

Internet phone services, or VoIP as they’re also known, work like a traditional phone service - you can even use your existing phone to make calls to other landlines or mobiles. VoIP is different to traditional home phone services because of the technology it uses - your phone handset must be plugged into a special VoIP adapter, which is plugged into your broadband router or modem. This converts the call to a VoIP call.

If you sign-up to the Vonage V-Plan 2, calls to landlines in the United Arab Emirates cost just 19p per minute, all day every day. All Vonage-to-Vonage calls are also free, though a minimum set-up fee, monthly subscription and line rental charges do apply.

Skype (www.skype.com) offers a similar service, which may also be worth trying. You can even make video calls to friends and family in Dubai for free if you’re both using Skype, taking advantage of cheap call rates to Emirati landlines if the person you’re calling is not online.

Choosing a phone provider to make cheaper calls

Whether you make calls to Dubai or Australia, Pakistan or the USA, there are a variety of landline calling plans to choose from that will suit your needs and help reduce your monthly bills. You should also consider VoIP calls, as these can be free for some destinations.

Use the Homephonechoices.co.uk postcode checker to find the packages available in your area, then compare call rates for Dubai and see if you can save money on your phone bills.