Renting mobile phones in Europe

If your aim is to avoid high cell phone costs there are three main options: 1) Use a telephone calling card and payphones. Main drawbacks: inconvenient and hard to find payphones in some locations. Hard for others to reach you. 2) Use Skype on a PC or cell phone over a wifi connection. Main drawback: Have to find a wifi connection. 3) Use a local prepaid cell phone from the countries you visit. I haven't seen rental phones in European airports, but I know there are companies that will rent to you before you go. Frankly, renting is a waste of money when you can buy a brand new, budget cell phone in countless locations (including some airports) and use that. You can get a cheap phone for somewhere between $20 and $40. You add credit to the prepaid account that comes with it at convenience stores or phone stores. The rental phones I've seen charge more than it would cost to buy the phone.

Suzanne, where do you go first? If it is the U.K., I recommend buying a prepaid phone there and then using that in roaming mode in other European countries. The rates are better than any other cell provider can give you (including the travel phone companies). The EU regulates what phone companies in Europe can charge for roaming and they are actually getting set to lower current rates again soon so the cost isn't horrific (but using a phone in this manner is more expensive than cell use at home). The nice thing about using a U.K. phone is that the messages you get will be in English and customer support lines are in English as well. If you look like you'll be running out of credit when outside the U.K., you can buy credit on ebay and add it to the phone wherever you are. I've successfully done that about 8 times this year. To research this more, go to carphonewarehouse.com, which is a big cell phone retailer and look at what they offer. Any of the U.K. cell companies (O2, Vodafone, T-Mobile, etc.) will show you the rates on their web sites. Have a good trip.

Suzanne, Renting Cell phones is perhaps the MOST EXPENSIVE option to choose so NOT the best way to "avoid high cell phone costs!!! One question that occurred to me - if you rent the phone (for example) in England and you're departing from Italy, how do you return the phone to the rental agency??? As Paul mentioned in the previous replies, it would be more cost effective to buy an inexpensive PAYG phone at your first stop in Europe. You could also obtain a phone from one of the "travel phone" firms such as Roam Simple, Call in Europe, Cellular Abroad, Telestial or Mobal, which would be ready to go as soon as you step off the plane. Which option to choose will depend to some extent on your anticipated calling patterns. Will you mostly be making "in country" calls, phoning back to the U.S. or do you need to be able to receive calls from the U.S.??? Good luck with your decision and Happy travels!