Phones & rates
Mobile phones are more and more often the person's only phone in Finland. And not without a cause, this is after all Nokia's home land.
Remember, if you are calling to Finland, to enter +358 and skip the first zero from the actual number (like: 044-1231234 -> +358-44-1231234, but some phone models need 00 instead of that plus in front of the number).
It is quite easy to get a used, mobile phone with 50€, but the new ones are quite much more expensive, well over 200€.
Services
It is possible to get different kinds of connections. In some of them calls can be very cheap, but the text massages expensive and the opposite. It is also possible to buy a prepaid connection, in which you first pay and then use it until the money you have paid has run out.
You can also buy different services. You can select a limit to your bill which prevents you from using phone more than you can afford. Some of the stores have also reminder that tells you when some amount of money you have picked is run out, so you know when to start to talk less on the phone. (For example, I have minder that sends me message when I have used 20€.)
From the beginning of the year 2006 it has been legal to sell packages of both connection and mobile phone so that the buyer gets the phone very cheap, but has to bind their selves to use the connection for agreed time. This is not very suitable for exchange students because the time limit is usually two years.
