Cheapest rates in germany for...
 

I am off to Germany later this year, what is the best value sim for texting/ calling uk and german numbers?

pick-n-mix german sim cards
 

If you can provide a german postal address, at the moment, otelo (Vodafone-DE) is probably the most suitable for you.

Alternatively, you could also pick-n-mix german sim cards from this list:

Tariftabelle Prepaid ? Prepaid-Wiki

gonna go with vodafone then....:-)

Texts back to UK cost 29c/message
 

I've just noticed that SMSes from Germany to UK cost 29c/message.

It should be possible to find something cheaper than this. Perhaps someone else has another suggestion.

Bugger...ok fair enough hope someone can assist one with sorting out a sim card!

I think solomo pro is the way to go:

UK landlines: € 0.09/min (humiliatingly they list the UK as "England" in their price list)
UK mobiles: € 0.29/min

DE landlines: € 0.06/min
DE mobiles: € 0.10/min

texting nationally and internationally: € 0.13/SMS

data: € 0.24/MB billed in 10KB-increments
solomo to solomo calls: € 0.03/min
vaildity: 13 months after last recharge

An advantage over all other German prepaid tariffs is, that solomo bills in seconds after the first minute ("60/1").

Solomo is only available online and can be recharged by credit card. The price for the SIM card ist € 14.95 incl. shipping and € 10 of initial credit and if you order through this link we would both get a bonus credit of €5 each.

Besides Germany they deliver to Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Netherlands, Poland, Switzerland and Spain but unfortunatley not to "England".

But of course I would help you to get a SIM, as I would for any other loyal fellow forum member - check your PM!

Depending on how much texts you intend to send you may consider registering for some VoIP-service from Betamax (e.g. poivy.com, justvoip.com, voipbuster.com), for which there is a Java Midlet (available at http://gsm.voipbuster.com) allowing texting to the UK for ~ € 0.04 (prices vary among the different Betamax brands) + ~ € 0.005 for the data traffic. Alternatively you can send SMS also from their website or through their PC software. You can set any phone number as sender ID, after verifying your number(s) by providing a code sent by SMS to the corresponding phone number.
Besides cheap texting those brands offer very cheap worldwide calling by VoIP (for which you need their free VoIP software or some other VoIP-capable piece of hardware).

I'd also suggest Solomo Pro - 6c landlines, 10c mobiles in Germany, 9c UK landlines, etc

€5 extra credit if a friend refers you

Don't, unless you want to pay 1.99 a minute to call the UK. O.tel.o is only one offer from Vodafone, the rest all have the same high international rate. (Sadly, none of the low prepaid data and international pricing of Vodafone UK has rubbed off on the German business.)

Solomo pro is probably the best choice, but if you just want to pick something up when you arrive, you could go with Fonic (like Solomo, 9 ct landline/29 ct mobile to the UK, but with 60/60 billing), which is available at lots of different shops.

Fonic charges € 0.19 per international text. But of course you could get Fonic and use Betamax for texting, which would be slightly more expensive as they charge data in 100KB-increments (while the data price of € 0.24/MB is the same), so sending a text will generate data worth € 0.024, which is tenfold more than solomo.

Don´t forget the EU euro-sms rate of 11p/text
 

If you want to keep everything simple, you could use a UK sim to send texts back to the UK. For example, 3UK would charge 11p (12c) per sms. Just don´t forget to disable call forwarding before you leave the UK!

This way, otelo and fonic look good. Fonic often offers starter packs which include 75/111/etc free-minutes to all german networks. This benefit might be an advantage for you, if it is available when you arrive in Germany.