"Charles" wrote in message
d...
In article , nospam
wrote:

In article m, Gary
wrote:

In a few weeks we go on a cruise vacation. We fly from the USA to
London and spend a couple of days in London (hopefully sleeping off the
jet lag), then on to an 11-day cruise around the British Isles (Ireland
and Scotland, no Wales), followed immediately by a flight back to the
USA.

We'd like to be able to maintain contact with our adult children for
emergency purposes. We have no experience using telephones overseas.

Can someone either make suggestions, or point to some good article that
contains suggestions for using your phone in that manner? We'd like to
avoid, if possible, astronomical charges for that previlege, but don't
have the foggiest notion what to do or what to not do.

if your phone is unlocked and can use a sim, get a local sim there.
you'll pay local rates for calls and you will have a local number.
someone calling you would need to call england.

or, just use it on wifi. be absolutely sure to turn off cellular. also
remove the sim (if it has one) so that there's no accidental
connections.

you can also use voip for international phone calls and not pay much
(or at all).

If they have an iPhone 5 it is not likely they have an unlocked
iPhone on AT&T. They won't unlock it unless it is out of contract.

In any case buying a local sim is overkill if they
only want to use it for emergency purposes.

Most want to use them for much more than emergency purposes,
for doing all sorts of stuff like booking accommodation and other
bookings etc.

Text messages are the least expensive way of keeping
in contact on a cruise. They can also text when the ship
is at sea and on the ships cell service.