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Wifi only phone plan from Republic Wireless works great in Europe!

This year my husband and I went to Paris and London and spent an extended layover in Copenhagen and we had a really great set up for keeping contact with our son back home. Republic Wireless is the cell provider we use and I strongly recommend it for frequent travelers who don't want to run up roaming charges. Republic uses wifi calling and texting as a big part of their service, but you can actually change your cell service fairly often to suit what you'll use. My husband's phone is usually $10.00 a month for talk and text and wifi-only data. We switched him to a wifi only phone plan for the two weeks of our trip which cuts the monthly bill to $5.00 a month which means no data roaming and no extra charges! we used an offline gps map to help us get around and we were able to call home on wifi at our hotel or do a video chat.
In the event you get a call or text when you are not connected to wifi, the message is stored until the phone connects. No messages lost as can happen when roaming with a typical cell plan.
Some places specifically block wifi calling on their wireless network, in that case google hangouts/skype/facetime worked just fine.

If you are a Republic Wireless user or you want to find a low cost cell carrier that works great internationally, we found no problem using our phones in the 3 countries we visited. My sister was shocked when I called her from London, and it was absolutely free!

Posted by
32345 posts

Republic Wireless only seems to be compatible with Android phones, so it won't be an option for everyone. If service is only accessible in Wi-Fi areas during travel, that could be a problem for people that need to be reachable at any time (which is the case for me). Finally, Republic appears to only be available to residents of the U.S., so not much use for the rest of us.

Thanks for posting though, as the information may be useful for some on the forum.

Posted by
1255 posts

Wow, this is timely. Earlier this summer, I ignored my ATT Gophone because I was immersed in work. Instead of emailing me to remind me to top up, ATT ended my account and gave away my number. When I was in Europe last month, I got by on just wifi email and internet access. But just this morning, I moved shopping for a new provider and phone to the top of my to-do list. And voilà, you are introducing a service that sounds like it might be a good fit for me.

Thanks!