Will TMobile LG B450 flip phone work well in France and Italy?

Assuming this is the LG 450, it is a quad band GSM phone and should work fine.

Valerie,

To begin with, it doesn't appear that the B450 has any Wi-Fi capability at all, so your "Ex" definitely won't be making any calls using that.

Whether it will work in Europe, I believe it should work, but possibly not in all areas. While it is a quad band GSM phone, it only seems to have one HSDPA band and some bands are "receive only", so it may not be compatible with all parts of the European networks. The LG website states....

"All listed frequency support is network/carrier specific. Roaming capability and network frequency support may not be available. Check with your network provider to see if and to what extent they offer support for this device."

Regardless of which countries he'll be going to, the European networks use slightly different frequencies for some functions. Stubborn or not, it might be time to upgrade to a newer model.

Be sure to mention that he'll need to check the Charger, to ensure it's designed to operate from 100-240 VAC. Plug Adaptors will of course be required specific to the countries he'll be visiting.

I was a new (again) T Mobile customer when we went to Europe in April. I had asked to be signed up on the plan that allows $.20 voice calling while in Europe.

My phone lasted 2 1/2 phone calls, and it quit working.

Call to their customer no-service department got me someone in the Philippines that had absolutely no common sense. She said I didn't have the customer plan I'd requested and had no suggestions about fixing why my service quit suddenly. I told her to completely cancel my service, and I've gone cellphone less again.

We just used our Chromebook for communication at WiFi spots and hotels. I don't care to talk on the phone very often anyway. And we found Europeans to be lacking in phone manners in public--just like in the U.S.

I have used T-Mobile in Europe - Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Germany - and it was seamless. Never had a problem. When you entered a country or crossed a frontier, you'd get a welcome text from T-Mobile. If all your husband wants to do is text or call, the phone should work fine. Just make sure roaming is turned on.

pessimist that I am, I picture some scenario involving the phone and a
untimely frustrated discard in a canal in Venice.

Well, that's one way he'll finally have to upgrade! Although I'm against polluting any bodies of water with electronic waste.

My husband's old flip phone works. I don't know what model it is, but we use TMobile. At firs he could only receive calls, but then I played around with it and realized that we needed to manually add the + sign in front of every phone number. Then it worked perfectly.

Thanks all. That's all (mostly) encouraging. It seems like, no matter how much I plan in advance, I always have some sort of technology failure while I travel so I was just hoping to help him avoid this very major one. He'll be gone a month and he definitely needs to be able to meet up with VRBO owners etc.

I think you are very considerate to help your ex-husband. :)

One additional point to add, is that which network the phone operates on here, is not as important as whether it has the technical capabilities and protocols to operate on the different frequencies in Europe. The cell networks are constantly evolving and older phones may have some issues.