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Cell phone for 3 countries (France, Switzerland, Italy)

We are traveling to Chamonix France, Zermatt Switzerland, Cinque Terre Italy, Florence Italy and Venice Italy. Any cost-effective way to have cell & data in all those places? Will I need a SIM card for each country? I have an iPhone 5s on AT&T that is unlocked.

Posted by
32171 posts

TF,

No, you won't need a SIM card for each country. You can buy a card in France that will work in all the countries you'll be visiting, although the cost will increase when outside the country of purchase, since you will then be "roaming". One option to have a look at is Lebara. I've never used them, but have heard good reports from others.

You could also check some of the "travel phone" firms such as Roam Simple, Cellular Abroad, Telestial, Mobal or EuroBuzz, many of which use numbers based in the U.K. but they work anywhere in Europe with consistent rates. The key here is that "cost-effective" and "data" don't usually fit together well.

Finally, you could also travel with AT&T international roaming, although the costs for data will undoubtedly be higher.

Posted by
15041 posts

We have SIM cards from Italy for our iPhones (a month of data at 2Gb is under €25 with Vodafone). When we cross the border into Switzerland for example, we start roaming, which can be costly. However you can buy a so called passport service. Basically for €3 day you have a certain number of Mb and minutes included also in another country. If you stay longer, you can buy a week's passport for more money. Different companies have similar deals with different names, but they all allow you to buy days of roaming. In your case you will probably buy it in the first country you arrive at, but you can do the same.

Posted by
1929 posts

Great question, as my wife & I will be traveling to those exact three countries in a few weeks. Only problem for us is that we recently bought iPhone 5s's & signed up to AT&T, thus they are locked. I will be doing only a little business to the US while abroad, but do not want to carry a tablet or computer. Our trip will be 17 days long.

My plan so far (subject to change) is to sign up for AT&T Passport's cheapest option, $30 start-up for each phone , $30 per phone for unlimited text, unlimited WiFi, 120MB data and $1.00/min calling. While the calling part of it seems high-priced, the vast majority of communication we plan to do will be via text & EMail (which doesn't eat up much data). The only thing that I can see that would really eat data will be when we're accessing GPS for walking directions in the towns/cities we'll be visiting, which could number 10-12 over France, Switzerland & Italy. I really like to know where I am! So...I am considering renting this Garmin Nuvi deal:

[https://www.lowergear.com/product.php/id/401][1]

$69 for 21 days, and I have to think that would really knock down data necessities on our iPhones. But, I'm not a huge fan of the Garmin interface. Five years ago for an Italian trip I used our car Garmin and installed Rome & Florence street maps, paid a lot of money & it didn't work well at all. So I'm a little dubious here. Anybody have experience with this, or have success with alternatives?

Bottom line is IF we rent the Garmin and take the AT&T Passport deal, communication costs for 2 phones over 17 days will probably be in the $200-$250 range, which doesn't sound awful, but am still investigating other possibilities.

Posted by
1054 posts

I switched to T-Mobile just for International traveling. I get unlimited text and data with the basic plan to over 120 countries. We recently did a trip to Crotia, Austria, Prague and Amsterdam and had no issues texting people in europe or back home and using data to make some reservations. We stayed at all small family owned BnB and they provided us their mobile incase we needed to text and not call and that worked out well.