Making phone calls in Hungary

To get a landline you should visit Digi (http://digi.hu/). They currently charge 4,999 HUF per month on a two year contract for TV, Broadband and Phone. It works out better to get the complete package. As calls are VoIP (over the Internet) they work out much cheaper. 15 HUF per minute from a landline and 40 HUF from a mobile. I do an hour or so to the UK each month (landline to landline and landline to UK mobile sometimes) and pay an average monthly bill of around 6,100 HUF (under £15) for the whole package plus calls.......in the UK I pay around £30 per month for the same kind of package with TalkTalk.

I would say Vodaphone and T-Mobile are the more popular mobile phone companies in Hungary, with Vodaphone being better for PAYG tariffs. I top-up the minimum 2,000 HUF, on the Vodafone's Net  package, whenever I need credit for calls only or 3,000 HUF if I want 500 MB of internet usage for free with the 3,000 being pure credit. The credit (i.e. 2,000 or 3,000) will last for months if I am not using the phone that much simply because the credit stays on the phone if not used. Note: You will need your Address Card if you want a monthly contract.

Maximilien wrote:

How to proceed to get a landline installed in Hungary?

We live in a national park, there is no phone line to our house, the park does not allow new above ground wires to be installed, so unless we pay to have the phone wire buried in the ground, we can have no land line. So we are completely mobile for phone and Internet. I mention this because wireless phone alone is a very workable option in Hungary, as coverage is very good around most of the entire country.

Maximilien wrote:

What are the mobile operators?

T-Mobile, Vodafone and Telenor.

Maximilien wrote:

What is your average monthly budget?

I am on a family package with my wife and only pay 1500 HUF for unlimited calls each month to her. Unless I am abroad, I only call my wife in Hungary, so that is my budget (I otherwise prefer email for communication). My wife makes far more calls than I do in Hungary, both personal and for business, so her monthly budget is probably an order of magnitude higher than mine.

We had a lineland phone in the package from UPC cable c0.
high speed internet, basic HU tv shows and the land line phone. Incoming calls were free but local calls out cost us 50 forints a min.
We use skype to call overseas and had a prepaid cell number for emergencies.
I never call anyone in Hungary except with skype.
We bought a pricey Apple phone and never even bothered to activate it in Hungary, only used the GPS on the phone.

We have something called an ATA (Analogue Telephone Adaptor).  This is an internet device which we can connect an ordinary phone to.  Using this, we login to a (free incoming) service in the UK (all automatically done) which gives us a free UK number (we use the service "Sipgate").  People there can often call us for free as their services are usually unlimited free outgoing calling and they are dialing a national (to them) number. They have no idea where we are.  It works pretty good.  Outgoing is more pricey than a national call inside the UK but in this year I used about 1 EUR of calls as I usually get people to call me.  With an ATA it's also possible to connect a fax machine (if anyone still uses those). 

Mrs Fluffy has an unlimited mobile (10K HUF a month) and what people do is give her a missed call (what some people call a ghost call) from their landlines to alert her and she calls them back. She uses it a lot (and I mean really really a lot so we feel she's getting her money's worth). We never call outbound from our house phone. Our bills plummeted since Mrs Fluffy got her unlimited mobile.  I use prepaid myself as I travel a lot, I'd never use the credit on a contract phone.  I use about 1000 Ft a year.

We don't even really need the house phone but it came with the internet and tv (part of the "triple play" system).

Our ATA is similar to this one (note: It's fiddly to set up but not impossible for non-IT mortals):

ATA