International roaming in the US with a European GSM phone

Three years ago, I bought a triband GSM phone with the idea of being
able to use it on visits to the US. (I live in Italy.) Since then, I
have used it in other European countries with no problem at all.
However, it has taken me a while to learn how to use it in the US.

The first time I went to the US, I bought a SIM card from T-Mobile and
used the phone in the New York and Philadelphia area. The card cost
about $70, of which $40 or so were set-up costs. However, there was a
bonus of 60 free domestic minutes, so the $30 of calls included in the
cost really yielded $60 worth. Both incoming and outgoing calls within
the US cost $.50 a minute. The card lasted me a little less than a
week of my 12-day trip. What really soaked up the minutes was calls
back to Italy. Worse, you have to buy more minutes while there is
still a positive balance on the card, otherwise you have to start all
over again with a new phone number and a new set-up cost. When I had a
small balance remaining, an incoming call from my husband in Italy
wiped me out. I decided to do without a cell phone for the rest of my
trip.

On my second trip, I decided to use international roaming. When I
arrived in the US, I got an SMS message from my Italian provider
telling me how to make calls back to Italy. It involved dialing
*101*COUNTRY-CODE-PHONE NUMBER# and hitting send. Then an incoming
call would alert me that my call was being placed. This procedure,
although a bit cumbersome, worked fine. However, I couldn't manage to
make calls locally in the US. I tried just dialing the number, which
didn't work. I tried using the procedure as instructed for calls to
Italy, but substituting "00-1" for the country code. "00" is the code
for an international call in Italy, and I assumed that it would be
needed because the call was being routed first to Italy. This didn't
work either. In any case, I was travelling with my daughter who had a
US cell phone, so I didn't persist very long in my efforts, but just
used her phone for local calls.

When I returned to Italy after that trip, I called Tim, my Italian
provider and asked how to make local calls while in the US. The person
who answered my call didn't know the answer, but transferred me to
someone who was supposed to know everything. This person told me,
after putting me on hold for a few minutes, that it was impossible to
make local calls when roaming in the US.

A few weeks ago, I again went to the US. I was undecided whether to
buy a US SIM card or try the international roaming, using some other
means for making local calls. I was a bit dubious about the
information I had got from Tim; it seemed very strange that I could
only use the phone for calls back to Italy. It occurred to me that I
had never tried calling locally exactly as I called Italy, with the
country code for the US ("1") and no code for international dialing.
When I got to the US, I tried it and it worked.

I used the phone for 12 days, supplemented by a cheap calling card I
bought in a Duane Reede drug store, which I used for local calls
whenever there was a phone handy. However, whenever I was in a place
where it was inconvenient to use a local phone, I used my cell phone
for both local and international calls. During the 12 days, I used
about 60 euros worth of service. That is not exactly inexpensive, but
it works out to less than buying a TMobile SIM card.

I'm not sure if I was paying for incoming as well as outgoing calls,
as is usual in the US but not in Europe. I also don't know if people
in the US who called me were paying more than they usually would to
call me in Italy on my cell phone. Finally, I don't know what my
husband was paying to call me; he just dialed my local Italian number
to reach me in the US. I don't have much hope of getting this
information from Tim, since it seems as though they know next to
nothing about the service.

At any rate, until they get some better-priced prepaid SIM service in
the US, I would recommend that Europeans try international roaming if
they have a tri-band GSM phone. Occasionally when I made a call there
was an inordinately long wait for it to go through; often I gave up
and tried again later. Other than this, the service was pretty good.
I've heard that GSM coverage is a bit spotty in the US, but I was
travelling mostly within a few hundred miles of New York City.
--------
Barbara Vaughan

My email address is my first initial followed by my last name at
libero dot it.
--multiplaza.nl.nu--