We are using our GSM Band-enabled smartphones in the UK. What does someone in the States dial to call us? Do they dial normally? 555-555-XXXX?
Or do they have to dial the plus sign and a 1?
Thanks!
I know my phone company could answer this but I'm working on a document right now and can't call them.
Unless you buy a UK SIM card for your phone, your normal phone number is what people call. If that is the case, note that you will incur a roaming charge if you don't answer the ring and a voice mail is left. However, if the phone is turned off, no charge will result unless you call voice mail from your phone using your network.
Callers will only have to dial your normal home number in order to reach you in Europe. No "+1" prefixes are necessary unless that's also required when people call you in your home area. When you first switch your phone "on" in Europe, there will be a short delay while the phone registers which also tells your home network where the phone can be located. As the previous reply indicated, you will pay for each incoming call, usually billed in one-minute increments. If you're dialing from Europe back to North America, a "+1" prefix is usually required.
I assume you're travelling with a roaming plan with your home cell network, and that your phones have the two GSM frequency bands used in Europe? If your phones are "smartphones" such as iPhone or Android, you'll need to be VERY careful with data roaming, as the charges can be HUGE.
When travelling with your normal home number, it's important to tell all your contacts NOT to phone while you're in Europe (unless important) as it will cost you money each time (especially annoying if they're trivial calls) and it's also very annoying to get "wakeup calls" in the wee hours of the morning from some moron that forgot to check the time difference.
Yes Ken, I can confirm that everything you said about our situation is true. We opted out of any data plan for our trip, will keep our data off completely, and plan to only use WiFi when available.
Thanks for the responses!
If you turn your phone completely off for any reason, re-check that Data is still "off" when you turn it back on. We were in Italy for 6 weeks last fall and my husband carefully kept data off. But near the end of our stay, he got a warning from ATT of "excessive data usage." He checked and data was "on". Turns out he had switched the phone off to save the battery while we were away from charging capability for a day. When he turned it back on, it defaulted to the normal settings. Fortunately, the warning was sent when the data charges were not much over $100 so it wasn't too bad.
