cell phones

Cinda,

A few comments regarding your question....

Your Son's AT&T coverage should work well, provided he has a quad-band Phone. He may find it useful to subscribe to their "international roaming" plan (which I believe provides slightly better rates, and can possibly be cancelled when he gets home).

Verizon has a rental program using dual-technology Phones such as the Motorola A840 or Blackberry 8830. You might contact them for details and pricing information.

As the previous post mentioned, using a Phone purchased in London may not be the best choice, as you'll be paying higher roaming rates while travelling in Paris & Rome. Have a closer look at Mobal or Cellular Abroad as they both offer "travel phone" services. Be sure to review the rates though, so that you have a clear understanding on what these will cost.

Rather than "calling each other if necessary", I'd suggest using text / SMS to keep in touch most of the time, as it's much less expensive (outgoing ~$0.60 and incoming free). Keep the voice calls to a minimum to reduce the costs. Your Son will probably be paying ~US$1 / min. for calls "in country" and ~US$2 for calls to the US or for incoming calls (which are routed from the US). The rates should be on the AT&T website.

Make sure that the Charger with your Son's phone (and yours) is designed for "world" operation (this should be designed to operate from 100-240V AC). A Plug Adapter will be needed though.

Happy travels!

That would work, but to call his cell you would have to essentially call the States from your prepaid, which could be costly. You'll also need different SIM cards for France and Italy, which adds cost. How likely is it that you will have a need to call each other anyway? If you plan to go different directions for a day, you could just decide on a meeting place, like people have done forever. You don't both need a cellphone. I often travel alone, so I carry a Mobal phone, which you buy once ($49) and only pay for the calls that you make, not a prepaid amount. I have never needed it for any kind of emergency, and have only used it twice. Since it has a European phone number, that might be a better option for you if you absolutely can't do without a phone.

The cheapest and most reliable choice would be to get 2 unlocked tri or quad band phones from ebay. Nothing fancy, though. You can find it on ebay for around $20-25. When you get to London , buy a SIM card. It will cost me less $ per minute than At&T or T-mobile. You can use the same SIM card anywhere in Europe.

AT&T uses GSM so your son's phone should work. If it's an iPhone it will work.

Ask him if he has an old GSM phone. If the old phone still works, you can buy a prepaid SIM in the UK for pretty cheap.

Verizon will loan you a phone for free for your trip, and add any charges (not roaming) to your regular bill. They say they have a $5/day fee but always waive it. The airtime rates are fine. Call them, I did this for a month in 7 countries (including Czech Republic)last year and it was great.

I did a lot of research in the past on this. Let me share my findings...and what has been told above is also true but I hope to add some interesting details:
AT&T: if your son has a tri or quad band GSM (ie it will work on 900/1800 Euro bands) then his DEVICE is compatible. Regarding service: yes, he could activate the World Travelers option at $5.99/month that will give $0.99/min + TAXES (I insist on the taxes, many forget that) for all incoming and outgoing calls made within each visited country for local calls and back to the US. (if the option is not turned on, then it is $1.29/min+t). It is indeed convenient, but keep in mind that people who don't know he is Europe will call and if he answers OR if they go to his voicemail the cost is steep! As a side note: if for any reason he has to make a call from one European country to another, then it is $0.99/min + the cost of a call from the US to the country he will be calling...AT&T has the rates at:
http://www.wireless.att.com/learn/international/long-distance/in-the-us.jsp
- Verizon: unless you have a World phone, it won't work. Some have recommended you to buy a local prepaid SIM card but you also need a device! You can buy a prepaid pack in London...but when you go to Paris/Rome, the UK will surely work, but the roaming rates will be outrageous! and you are not going to buy a prepaid solution in each country...it is wasted money. You will pay in Sterling pound and Euro...our $ are not worth much these days. The rental solution of Verizon is still at $1.29/min and same issue as AT&T with incoming calls, voicemail etc...
About: Mobal: the phone is indeed $49. with a UK number, but the rates are prohibitive - on average $1.50/min to call within Europe and back to the US!
What I do for my own found: I purchased from the US an unlocked device and SIM card from callineurope.com
it is US$, pay the following month on my c.card the calls, good for all Europe & good rates

Re: Mobal
If you don't make a lot of calls (such as only in an emergency) you won't rack up a lot of charges. There is no setup fee, you're just billed for the time you use. In-country UK calls are free, and different countries have different rates. Because there are no ongoing fees for its use, I still prefer Mobal for what I need it for. If I was going to make 10-minute calls to see what's up at home, I'd go with a phone card. For Cinda's purposes, the Mobal still could be the easiest and cheapest, depending on how much she would use it.

Hey Nancy, I understand your points that you like a postpaid service, with non ongoing fees etc...I was just trying to say that for the same convenience and comfort of service, other companies exist and that the calling rates are up to 5 times cheaper than them. Your mobal phone is unlocked so you can use a different sim card in it and save. Only incoming calls in UK are free as it is a uk line, but not outgoing. I mentioned callineurope.com because I used them, but others like roamsimple exist too...all without any service charge and you pay later. With a calling card, you need to have access to a landline (at your residence, or public phone) but it is not always easy to gain such access, and calling cards are also in local currencies and prepaid and you will lose credits if don't use soon in the future. Solutions exist from the US that allow you to save with mobile phones...many sometimes scare us travelers that using a cell phone in europe is prohibitive, but it is honestly not. Things have changed a lot.

Hi John, Thanks for your post. I looked at the web site for callineurope. I had previously used my unlocked quad band phone with an Italy sim card and found it very confusing. I received many text messages in Italian and hoped they weren't crucial. I ran out of minutes one night mid-call. The following year we were traveling to three different countries so I didn't want to have to switch cards at each border. So I tried mobal. It was very easy, worked in each country, great reception. But the calls were quite expensive. It looks like callineurope has a similar service as mobal but much lower rates. I'm glad to hear it worked for you and plan to order a sim card from them for my next trip. Any experience text messaging home to US verizon customers? It did not work at all for me with the Italy sim card. I even went into a local cell phone shop and asked the young clerk for help. With the mobal sim, texting only worked one way. Thanks so much for sharing all your research with cell phone use abroad.
-Nancy

Per-minute costs aren't the only thing you have to consider. Both callineurope and roamsimple SIM cards are only good for a year, after which you have to pay again to renew them (unless you have made $60 worth of calls during the year). With roamsimple you have to have a different SIM card (at a separate fee) for each country you are going to use it in. THEN you pay for the minutes you use.

With Mobal you buy the phone for $49, which comes with a permanent international SIM card (so you don't have to change SIM cards when you cross borders). Your phone number is permanent, too. You do pay more per-minute, true, so it's not good for people who want to call home and chat. You can't run out of minutes at an inconvenient time since they are not prepaid. As I said before, for my purposes, Mobal is the cheapest and easiest alternative.

At the end the most important is to use something that fits one's needs and profile. Regarding your question on text messages: I am myself t-Mobile and it worked ok...I indeed heard some friends who told me that while in europe with GSM sim cards they had issues with sending (interesting enough they could receive but issue sending)to Verizon. Maybe it is due to the fact that Verizon is CDMA and not GSM...but it does not seem to be consistent and I could not answer for sure. It happens that when you have a local sim cards the networks (carriers) send welcome message, or other marketing info but as the incoming textos are always free then I usually don't worry about them. I understand your point with Mobal: they made it easy as there is no need to chose a country for the service and they give you a UK number with the phone. It does work everywhere and the incoming rates outside UK I see is at $1.25/min. My rule (again just my experience) was to try to get a postpaid service with the sim card of the country I go, so to have free incoming calls and cheap outgoing. When you go to multi country it is more tricky as one wants to find a sim card that will work all over but at decent rates (buying a bunch of sim cards at some point is annoying like you said and swapping is inconvenient). Personally, I have the French sim card with callineurope that is good for me to roam all over europe and outside France I pay 39c/min incoming, 69c local and 99c to the US (I travel 3-4/year, so I do the $60). It never expires too. I did consider Mobal in the past but after a few calculations I realize that on average $60 would give me basically only 45 min of calls. But when we are lucky to travel a few times it is the opportunity to test different options and share the experiences! It is what we do. Thanks for the feedback.

We have AT&T I-phones. We set up the international plan with the technology package. The package includes e-mail and internet but not text messages. The phones worked perfectly in the UK and France. There was never a problem with the connections. My e-mail was always there for me. The internet worked just as it does at home. It was great. The overall expense was, however, exorbitant!! We are going to Italy next summer. I won't be as well connected this time. I think I'll take my old Razor phone and buy a SIM card over there. By the way, a normal SIM card does not fit in an I-phone.

AT&T does have GSM coverage but the rates are a bit high. I used Roam Simple and their Europe SIM card was a cost effective alternative. I was very pleased with their service and I believe they use a TMobile UK based service which is good to know. In the past I used Mobal but their rates are much higher and I have in the past been scammed by a eKit and One Roam in the past as their services was is know as a callback service - BUYER BEWARE of Callback services. Important things to note when you do travel is to ensure you have an unlocked GSM phone and as mentioned in previous post - iPhones could get you hard in the end with all the data costs so I would recommend for you to get a basic unlocked GSM Phone with at least the 900 and 1800 MHz GSM bands. Happy travels.

I also have AT&T - their International rates are still ridiculously expensive. Here's what I did the last time I was there - I bought the cheapest cell phone I could find at the cell phone store down the street from our hotel - it was 30 Euro. I may have found one cheaper somewhere else, but it was convenient and fine and worth it to not shop all over. I now have a cell phone that will work for my European travels. I bought a pre-paid SIM card while I was there and used that. Super easy. Will be easy to use again. Because I bought it there, it's unlocked, so I can use it on any network. It has a European plug, but if I wanted to use it in the US I could get a backwards electric adapter, put in my US sim card, and it would be good to go. All for a whopping $45.

Robin,

Hopefully the "cheapest cell phone" you bought in Europe is a quad-band model, as it won't work with your U.S. SIM card if it's not. Some of the really inexpensive cell phones I've seen in Europe have only been dual-band (900 / 1800), so won't work in North America.

Cheers!

Hi all. Hope you don't mind me sneaking a question in on this topic.

I am heading away soon for a month long trip around Europe (France, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Greece) and then will be based in London for 6 weeks. I would like to get some cheap mobile phones for myself and my girlfriend for use during this time. I expect that we will be together almost all the time in Europe and so will only use them very rarely or for emergencies. In London we will use them more often.

I have seen phones on ebay.co.uk for very low prices. What I really need to know is, how important is it to buy an unlocked phone? For example, I saw some nice looking but simple ones for 11 pounds that are on the Orange network. Would there be a prepaid or pay-as-you-go plan on that network that would allow those phones to be used all around Europe? I am not too concerned about higher international roaming charges since we will barely use them in Europe. Or are they restricted to certain countries. I don't really want the hassle or cost of finding a sim card in every new country. I have checked the Orange web site, but I haven't quite managed to get my head around this one. Are there other providers that offer all of Europe plans?

Sorry for the long post and multiple questions! I expect it is probably quite easy in the end, but I just need a slight push in the right direction! :)

Have a look at these deals from the Carphone Warehouse for UK PAYG phones

http://www.carphonewarehouse.com/mobiles/pay-as-you-go

A store locator, they have shops in most town centres

http://www.carphonewarehouse.com/store-locator

Thanks Linda. They look like some good deals actually. I think I might stop in at one of the stores when I get there and make sure to get something that fits the bill.

Cheers! :)