Out Of Sight - Out of Mind?

A survey has found the majority of Brits struggle to stay in touch with family and friends living abroad.

 

The majority of Brits (57%) now say they have close family and friends living abroad, according to research* conducted on behalf of Ringo.co, the international calling app. The research found that Brits who have loved ones abroad have an average of 13 close family or friends overseas, with two-thirds (66%) of these people saying they find it a struggle to keep in touch as frequently as they would like with their parents, children, cousins, aunts and uncles, grandparents and best friends.

 Why aren’t we keeping in touch?

The top reasons stated for not keeping in contact with friends and family as often as most Brits would like are:

Time zones (26%)

Cost (18%)

Friends or family not being available (14%)

Confusing time zone differences as well as high costs and confusing billing rates were found to be the two main reasons people don’t stay in touch. In response to these findings, Ringo.co has introduced two new, innovative features that directly address the two biggest issues people have when trying to stay in touch with loved ones.

Firstly, Ringo now allows users to check their contacts’ local times to ensure no unwanted calls are made in the early or late hours. Secondly, it has introduced a live itemised billing feature – this means consumers know exactly how much an international call costs as it happens. Ringo.co has taken an unprecedented stance of 100% transparency by providing real time costs for each call made through the app. This finally puts to bed the controversies surrounding the international calling market lacking transparency over cost.  

Brits and their kids

Meanwhile, when looking at how parents stay in touch with their children who are living overseas, 35% prefer to use VoIP services followed by calling a landline (34%) and texting (32%). However, more British parents still use post to keep in touch (14%), making it more popular than Twitter (8%).  Even more surprisingly, younger Brits (aged between 18-34) are almost twice as likely to send snail mail than the over 55s (30% vs 16%).

Most popular destinations for Brits abroad

The UK to US calling route is the 5th busiest in the world amounting to around 4.4 billion minutes per annum. Ringo.co’s research found that one in five (19%) Brits have family or friends living in the US and have therefore decided to offer free calling from the UK to US mobiles.