Cell for teen

If hes on a school tour wont they help him make emergency calls?

He won't be with a school tour. He will be traveling solo and staying with friends. So, when he is out and about, he will need his own cell.

Pepita,

You could either buy an inexpensive mobile phone in the first country he visits, and use that for the entire trip, or buy a phone from one of the travel phone firms such as iRoam, Cellular Abroad, Telestial or Mobal and have it delivered to your home before he leaves. The latter option would provide him with a working phone as soon as he steps off the plane, so he'd be able to send you a text message straight away to let you know he made it safely to Europe. For the purposes you mentioned, he doesn't need a smart phone, but just a basic model.

The travel phones often have a U.K. number which works seamlessly throughout Europe, and provides post-paid billing (calls charged to a credit card) so he wouldn't have to be concerned with topping up the minutes when they're depleted. Check the websites of the firms mentioned above to see if that might work for you.

If he presently has a phone, the other option would be be to sign up for international roaming with your home cell network. You'll have to check with them to see whether that would work.

last year when I traveled to England and Belgium with my boyfriend, we found that it cheapest to get a one time plan through our normal provider on one of our phones.it was $30 thru AT&T and provided a reasonable amount of data, unlimited texts and a good rate on phone calls (which we had to use once within 4 hours of landing to address a non-working card at a cash machine). All US companies have a similar option. It was much easier than trying to buy a new SIM card and deal with that after landing, and it's was nice to have the data for unexpected map needs, random Yelp for restuarants/bars, and to text our families immediately when we landed.

On my IPhone which was left on airplane mode the entire trip, I was able to use FaceTime and iMessage to stay in touch completely free of charge. No extra apps needed! We will be doing the same thing for our trip this summer!

"On my IPhone which was left on airplane mode the entire trip, I was able to use FaceTime and iMessage to stay in touch completely free of charge."

It's important to note that in order to do that with the phone in "Airplane mode", Wi-Fi would have to be switched on, and those functions would only be available in Wi-Fi areas.

Pepita, how long will your teen be travelling in Europe?

We have Mobal (formerly Eurobuzz) phones which came with both a UK number and a US number so people at home can call without international charges. At $0.79 per minute (or per text) they encourage brief outgoing calls, but are great for emergency calls/texts in Europe. Charge goes on the credit card as the time is used.
Is the once-a-week call his idea or yours ? Would you be OK with a text or email (except for emergency) ?

Thank you to all of you who answered my question.

Pepita,
There is not much difference either way. My daughter bought a phone here before leaving for Europe and then bought a SIM card after she arrived in Spain. Other students waited to buy one after they arrived and the total difference was about 10-15 euros if the got the cheapest model (not smartphone). NOTE: make sure the phone you buy here is quad band which "I think" is what they use in Europe.

Nestor,

"NOTE: make sure the phone you buy here is quad band which "I think" is what they use in Europe."

A quad band phone is designed to use four different frequency bands. Two bands are used in Europe and much of the rest of the world (900/1800) and two in North America (850/1900). Therefore a quad band phone has the necessary frequency bands to function in either area. This only applies to voice & text service, as it gets more complicated with phones that provide data.