Update on cell phone in Europe (cross-posted)

Posted to rec.travel.europe
c/p to alt.cellular.verizon

I posted here a while ago asking about options for a cell phone to use
in Europe. We'll be traveling through UK, France, Hungary, Austria,
Germany, Italy, Spain and on two cruises. My regular carrier is Verizon,
a CDMA system.

I did not want to get to the UK and start looking to buy a phone. We are
doing very little independent traveling and I don't want the hassle of
phone shopping. I also didn't want to worry about purchasing sim cards
in each country.

I checked with several rental companies and they were all way
overpriced, had huge deposits, plus the charges were even higher for a
US number and none were willing to assist me in figuring out how to
forward my US cell phone to their numbers.

I did check with AT&T and T-Mobil this weekend and they would have me
buy a phone from $125 to $250, pay for the sim card and the per call
charges were much higher. I would also have had to sign a minimum of a 1
year contract. Definitely not an option! Most of my friends and family
are on Verizon and the mobile to mobile calls don't use minutes or money.

Verizon has a really great plan for infrequent travelers who will be
abroad less than 21 days. Not good for us. We'll be gone 49.

Verizon offered me a plan through Vodafone that was $21 to ship the
phone both ways, a $50 deposit then the cost of calls incoming and
outgoing. They would transfer my US number to this phone for me. It was
also $3.99 per day!

This seemed outrageous. I went around a few times with the rep and she
finally told me that if I "upgraded" my current contract, I could
purchase a new global phone for $99.99. I would keep my same calling
plan. I would keep my same phone number. The phone is a Motorola MOTO
Z6c global phone (CDMA and GSM) I have to add an extra year to my
contract (2 year contract, but I have a year to go on the current one
anyway) I could also keep my current LG phone, though it would be
deactivated.

Checking e-bay, the MOTO Z6c was selling for $149.99 so after I come
home from Europe, I could deactivate it, reactivate my old LG phone and
sell the global phone.

This seemed to me to be the best deal. If I don't make or receive any
calls, it costs me nothing. If I do make any calls, all I pay are the
fees of $1.29/minute.

BTW, I've been with Verizon for over 8 years and this will be my fifth
phone and the first time I have ever paid for a phone.

I'm sure that many of you will have other and probably cheaper
suggestions, but I did try some of the suggestions given when I first
posted and none of them worked for us.

I just thought I'd share what I learned.
--
Janet Wilder
Bad spelling. Bad punctuation
Good Friends. Good Life

In article , Janet Wilder
wrote:

I did not want to get to the UK and start looking to buy a phone. We are
doing very little independent traveling and I don't want the hassle of
phone shopping. I also didn't want to worry about purchasing sim cards
in each country.

I was in the UK this past June. It was no hassle at all getting a
phone. Walked into Carphone Warehouse and bought a Motorola for the $50
which included a $20 prepaid sim card.

--
Charles

Charles wrote:
In article , Janet Wilder
wrote:

I did not want to get to the UK and start looking to buy a phone. We are
doing very little independent traveling and I don't want the hassle of
phone shopping. I also didn't want to worry about purchasing sim cards
in each country.

I was in the UK this past June. It was no hassle at all getting a
phone. Walked into Carphone Warehouse and bought a Motorola for the $50
which included a $20 prepaid sim card.


Thanks, Charles, but I wouldn't have a clue as to where to even find a
Carphone Warehouse.

My DH has mobility issues and walking around looking for phone stores
just wasn't an option for us.

--
Janet Wilder
Bad spelling. Bad punctuation
Good Friends. Good Life

Janet Wilder wrote in news:48d07097$0$12412
:

I just thought I'd share what I learned.
--
Janet Wilder


Janet, are you living in a tent or better accomodations in Europe? Even
in a tent, you can save a ton of sellphone waste by setting up your
stateside contacts with Skype on their computers, which is FREE and FREE
to use to talk to them from any free wifi you can find all over Europe.
All they do is leave their Skype running on their computer waiting for
your call. Make a daily timeslot schedule. You can even use a Skype
conference with all of them at once to tell friends and family how you
are doing....instead of repeating the same information over and over on
a sellphone, one at a time.

Buy a Nokia N800 internet tablet off Ebay. Nokia upgrades it for free
to the very latest version of Maemo Linux with a very simple PC program.
You just plug the tablet into the PCs USB port and run the program to
completely reprogram the tablet to the latest operating system. The
N800 has a native Skype program that self-installs for free. Setup your
Skype account for free from your home computer now. Get everyone to do
the same. You all lose nothing....except the sellphone ripoffs.

There's free wifi all over Europe at cafes, hotels, etc. Chat with
friends over dinner. You don't have to pay through the nose to call the
States.

Now, if you buy stateside Skype Unlimited Skype out for $24/year, last
time I looked, you can use it anywhere in US and Canada to call any
phones US/Canada. You can also buy SKYPE IN phone numbers for about $28
each in about 28 countries. Your Skype supports up to 10 numbers from
any of those places. I have a number in Charleston, SC and one in
London, England for my English friends to call. Both work great and I
THINK, but am not positive, that THEY can call YOU on any Skype number
you already have while you're on the internet anywhere! If YOU call
from Europe, you'll be charged the princely sum of 2.1c/minute as you
are out of the country. That's STILL lots better than $1.49/minute!

http://www.skype.com/

Take a look. Works fantastic. I just got off Skype with a friend in
Siberia! We talk for hours PC to PC with full color video, but the
tablet won't do video mobile on Skype. You can send/receive voicemail,
messages, swap files, though.

Check it out.....(c;

Do you REALLY need a phone online ALL THE WHILE in Europe? I doubt it.

Janet Wilder wrote:

My DH has mobility issues and walking around looking for phone stores
just wasn't an option for us.

$1.29/minute isn't too bad, but for calls from Europe to the U.S. I'd
definitely set up a OneSuite account before I left. There are toll-free
access numbers in UK, France, Hungary, Austria, Italy, Germany, and
Spain, and it's 9.9¢ per minute to the U.S.. Enter your frequently
called numbers into their speed dialing system in advance. Their system
works really well. When my daughter went to Taiwan earlier this year she
used it to call home.

It sounds like your biggest concern is keeping your Verizon phone
number, and the only way to do it is to get the Verizon global phone,
though technically this isn't true. An easy way to keep the Verizon
number working is to simply forward it, before you leave, to something
like a MaxRoam SIM which has a U.S. phone number. The MaxRoam SIM can be
used in an unlocked GSM phone. I bought a quad-band prepaid T-Mobile
phone for $30 and had it unlocked for $15.

I doubt if you'll be able to get much for that Verizon phone when you
get back. Most tourists to Europe use prepaid SIM cards, whether or not
they have a U.S. GSM carrier. Business types either already have a dual
system phone, or use GSM.

In article ,
SMS wrote:

$1.29/minute isn't too bad, but for calls from Europe to the U.S. I'd
definitely set up a OneSuite account before I left. There are toll-free
access numbers in UK, France, Hungary, Austria, Italy, Germany, and
Spain, and it's 9.9¢ per minute to the U.S.. Enter your frequently
called numbers into their speed dialing system in advance. Their system
works really well. When my daughter went to Taiwan earlier this year she
used it to call home.

Are the numbers toll free when dialed from a cell phone, especially a
prepaid which may be using an MVNO?

poldy wrote:
In article ,
SMS wrote:

$1.29/minute isn't too bad, but for calls from Europe to the U.S. I'd
definitely set up a OneSuite account before I left. There are toll-free
access numbers in UK, France, Hungary, Austria, Italy, Germany, and
Spain, and it's 9.9¢ per minute to the U.S.. Enter your frequently
called numbers into their speed dialing system in advance. Their system
works really well. When my daughter went to Taiwan earlier this year she
used it to call home.

Are the numbers toll free when dialed from a cell phone, especially a
prepaid which may be using an MVNO?

No. Calls to the OneSuite network can be made from hotel phones or pay
phones.

If it were me, and I wanted to minimize costs, this is what I'd do:

1. Buy a GeoSIM card which allows free incoming calls in much of Europe.
"http://www.globalsimcard.co.uk".
2. Open a MyGlobalTalk Account "447924003627" and forward the
MyGlobalTalk number to the SIM card phone number.
3. Before leaving the U.S. forward the Verizon phone to the MyGlobalTalk
number.

It sounds complex, but it's actually quite straightforward.

SMS wrote:

Oops, s.b.:
2. Open a MyGlobalTalk Account "http://www.myglobaltalk.com/" and forward the
MyGlobalTalk number to the SIM card phone number.

Martin wrote:

I'm sure you could cope with going into Woolworth's

Boo hoo. That was below the belt. We lost all of our Woolworth's stores
several years ago.

On 2008-09-17, SMS wrote:
If it were me, and I wanted to minimize costs, this is what I'd do:

1. Buy a GeoSIM card which allows free incoming calls in much of Europe.
"http://www.globalsimcard.co.uk".
2. Open a MyGlobalTalk Account "447924003627" and forward the
MyGlobalTalk number to the SIM card phone number.
3. Before leaving the U.S. forward the Verizon phone to the MyGlobalTalk
number.

That works, but I don't think it is all that cheap. I believe
GeoSim uses numbers from a Manx or Channel Islands mobile operator,
and that MyGlobalTalk charges 38 cents/minute to forward calls
to those, so the fact that you aren't charged by the mobile
company doesn't help so much. I believe it also costs a $20-something
per year maintenance fee to keep the GeoSIM alive.

A Celtrek SIM comes with a US inbound number, charges between 29
and 39 cents/minute for incoming calls in Europe, depending on the
country, has somewhat lower rates than GeoSIM for outbound calls to
the US, and they don't charge a maintenance fee if you want to keep
the SIM for future trips.

Dennis Ferguson