Phones

It depends who your carrier is. I have TMobile. I took my iPhone to italy last month and used it everyday with no added charges. It was extremely useful.

I have AT&T. I took my iPhone and will take it again in July. I bought an international plan. Worked for me.

I have AT&T and have an up-coming trip to Italy. I hope this works, but I bought only 30 minutes of call time and 50 text messages. I am not going on vacation to communicate with those at home. I bought these for emergency purposes or to text my group while we are there. It only cost me $40. Hope this will work!

I took my iPhone 5 to Italy (and France) last month. My carrier is Verizon and I enrolled in their global voice (one-time fee of $4.99 to purchase discounted call rate) and data plans ($25 for 100 MB). Text messages were 5 cents each to receive and 50 cents each to send. I didn't plan to make many calls (and I didn't) but wanted to be accessible from the U.S. in the event of an emergency. Plus, I was able to keep my U.S. phone number. I also used wifi when in the hotels to save on data usage. I ended up using only 40 MB of data in one week, occasionally checking email, weather, restaurant info, etc. on the web when out of the hotel away from wifi. The company I work for gets a 23% discount on Verizon services (which also applies to personal cell phones, DSL service, etc.), so the above mentioned prices were actually higher than I actually paid. This was the third time I used Verizon's global service in Europe during the past year; all trips were of one- or two-week duration. I opted for the pure convenience of staying with Verizon for global service - no messing around with buying used unlocked phones on eBay, buying SIM cards for each country, etc. Sure, you can save some money by going the latter route, but if you don't make many phone calls, the plan is really not very expensive. I think it cost me a total of around $40 for each trip. However, if you DO plan to make a lot of phone calls, then I definitely would look into other options, since even with the discounted Verizon rate, phone calls were $0.99 per minute. Of course, if you only want to use the iPhone when connected to wifi, then that is reason enough to bring it; it beats dragging around a laptop or tablet for that purpose, plus you have a decent camera in the phone when out and about.

The answer will depend on which model iPhone you're using, which network you're with and what you plan to use the phone for (ie: mostly data use, voice & text only). Some additional information would be helpful.

You are correct. I have an iPhone 5 and Verizon is my carrier. Plan to use it for calls, text and data

Looks like you're on the right track with this advice. More general info is at http://www.ricksteves.com/travel-tips/phones-tech.

The first step will be to check with Verizon and obtain information on their international roaming plans. If you only plan on making occasional voice calls, that might be best option. Texts are usually quite cheap on most plans. The biggest cost will likely be for data, depending on how much you access that.

Using Verizon roaming will be the easiest and simplest option, as it doesn't involve buying other SIM cards, phone unlocking or anything else.