another Italian phone question
 

I have checked with cingular today, and with my phone, a 5.99 initial start up fee, and
$3.10 per minute, I can make/receive calls with my cellphone from Italy to the US., with no sim card purchase necessary.(apparently they can install the program from
the airways direct to my phone in minutes.
Sounds good initially, but the charges seem to have the potential to add up quickly, though it would be convienent to use my cell to call home.
Option 2 is subscribing to a calling card from SBC global, receive and make calls from my hotel room, etc. This (I am going from memory on this one, so the $ may not be right on) has an approx 2.99 fee,with I believe a 3 month minimum, so let's call it a
$9.00 fee, and as I recall, about 10 cents per minute to/from the US. This would, of course, be ideal for our son who is babysitting our dogs, to call us at our hotels from our US home phone. It would also be ideal for us to call home from Italy IF
the answer to my question to follow works as I am hoping...
If you are making an international call from Italy to the US using the SBC calling card from your hotel room phone, does the hotel charge you for the call as well?????
In Thailand, in 1995, there were no hotel phone charges, only the ones that the (at the time ATT) calling card incurred on my regular phone bill.
In Korea in 2000, using the same situation, I was surprised upon checkout from the hotel to have about $85.00 in phone charges for using the hotel phone.
Do any of you know how it works with the Italian hotel room phones?????
Thanks as always!

Here is another possibility that you cingular subscribers may know the answer to...
On our plan, we have free mobile to mobile calls. So...If we subscribed to the Cingular International plan for $5.99,left one of our cell phones with our son, and we called each other from these phones only, would we still pay the per minute and/or roaming charges???

I already posted this reply, but it's not showing up. Sorry if it gets double posted:
__________________________________

I am also a Cingular customer and am planning to take my cell phone to Europe this summer. First, as for the free mobile-to-mobile minutes, they do NOT apply when travelling abroad. You will pay just as much as calling any other US number.

As far as Cingular's World Traveler $5.99 deal, that is actually a monthly charge. If you subscribe to World Traveler, you can call from almost any European country for $.99/minute. You can alternatively activate a FREE International Roaming service, for which rates in those countries are $1.29/minute. Those rates apply to most devices (mine included), but apparently with your phone it is $3.10/minute. I'm getting my information at http://www.cingular.com/customer_service/roaming_gen and from experience w/roaming in Mexico. I'm not sure why it would be more expensive for certain phones, but ANYWAY, if you're planning on having any kind of lengthy conversation, I wouldn't suggest calling from a cell phone (especially at your $3.10/min). I'm only planning to use mine for emergencies, and if I want to call home for more than a minute I'll get a local calling card. HOWEVER, you should know that according to the website mentioned above, if you have a text-messaging plan, incoming texts will simply be "applied to your package allowance." Even if you don't, it's just $.10 incoming and $.50 outgoing, which is a lot cheaper than a phone call if it's just a short message like, "Which brand of dog food was I supposed to buy?"

Personally, I am planning NOT planning to pay $5.99 a month just to get a $.30/min discount. I'll pay the $1.29/min for emergency calls and rely on text messaging and email for the rest of my communication. Cell phones are convenient, yes, but for me it's not worth it to spend the extra money.

Oh, and as for whether you'll be charged by the hotel for outgoing calls, I can't say from personal experience, but having lived in a foreign country I would suggest either trying your calling card from a pay phone or some other courtesy or private phone. No reason to risk getting a huge hotel phone bill.

Hi D,

>If you are making an international call from Italy to the US using the SBC calling card from your hotel room phone, does the hotel charge you for the call as well?????<

You betchum, Red Ryder. :)

((I))

If use of a cell phone is not a limiting factor, I would suggest buying an international calling card when you get into Italy. I bought one from a tobacco shop for 15 euros and I had 700 minutes on it which is cheap. This was way more than I needed.

thanks for all of your always helpful and friendly advice. Since we are now 5 weeks and 6 days, but not counting (:
these are the little, but important details I am trying to work out. And my fellow fodorites, are much more informative than any guidebook I have ever read!
Okay, so, phone cards purchased in Italy...can I, should I, use these at a payphone, or is it okay at my hotel room? I emailed all of my hotels last night, one of them so far, the antiche figure in venice, says that they do not charge for card calls, but connection fees may apply, from the italian govt, at a rate of approx 1-2 euros, payable upon check out at the hotel, any thoughts?
Are payphones where we can use these cards widespread in Italy? any hidden costs, connection fees, etc?
One last thought (I think) for now....
what if I activated the world traveler acct at Cingular, called my US home, and told them to call me back to the actual hotel phone # and gave them the room # to call us (we would of course give them the phone #'s in advance) and have set up for them, from our home phone, an SBC international calling card, where it I think is pretty inexpensive. Sounds like a simple, yet conviluted plan, but it may work, and we would have our cell phone for emergencies?

If you use your US cell phone its very easy to spend a lot of $$ with out realizing it...Until you get your bill. My cell phone charges were well over $100.00 for my 8 days in Italy. I received several calls from people that did not know I was out of town, the call goes through to you without using international dialing codes, so the person at the other end does not know. It was great however to know in a emergency that your family could reach you anytime. Another option to save $$ which I did another time I was in Europe and did not have an international cell was to tell people to leave messeges on you cell number and then buy a phone card in Italy and call your cell to check your messeges.

Why don't you get an international telephone card in Italy to use for calling back to the U.S. instead of using your cell phone? It's much much cheaper. I always buy them and only use my cell phone for emergencies.

I second the advice of csroe above.

The Europa international card I used in Italy last month cost 5 Euro for 200+ minutes, with no charge from my hotel for the local call to initiate the call.
The card can also be used from pay phones and cell phones; I don't know if different rates apply to those.
Here's info, with a picture of the Eurpoa card, that can be enlarged to see the calling instructions:
http://slowtrav.com/italy/instructions/dialing.htm

I made about 12 calls to the U.S. in 8 days, and still had more than an hour remaining when I left (gave the still-useful card to the flight attendant on my homeward transatlantic flight -- she'll get back to Italy long before I will).

I am with Cingular as well and plan on paying the $5.99 for the month as I'm sure my calls will exceed 20 minutes and cover the cost of the $1.29/min vs .99/min. Do you know why you're being told $3/10/min? That's outrageous! I will also be using a calling card for calling home. Since we are staying in apartments without phones I suspect having both will come in useful. Buon viaggio!

thanks for all of your replies. I emailed our hotels, and one of them
(the Antiche Figure in Venice) was very helpful, and said that using the Italian phone card from our hotel room would not incur any costs from the hotel. Is this your experiance? If so I figured I would use that option, and set up my cell phone for emergencies.
Also, I think the 3.10 rate I was quoted (by a confused operator btw, who was searching for info for quite a while) was incorrect, since when I go online to cingular I found the world travelers 5.99 plan with about 90 cents per minute, more in line with what all of you say.

You can get Cingular to give you the Subsidy Unlock Code and then you can buy an Italian SIM card for your phone. Is your phone a Quad band phone or a Tri-band phone? If it is tri-band does it have both the 900 and 1800 bands?

I plan to do this with my cell phone this fall....not for calls back to the US but for text messaging to keep up with my fellow travelers when we do different things in Florence and Rome.

www.prepaidgsm.net has a lot of information about buying a prepaid SIM card in another Country.

The mobile operators in Italy are TIM (Telecom Italia Mobile), Vodafone, and Wind. I read that a Wind SIM card in your cell phone and an International Calling card from Wind was the least costly way to call back to the US.

go to ekit.com

They have some of the best rates on two things you should be using (especially when travelling overseas) in combination w/ one another:

-phone calling card (great rates)
-pre-paid GSM cards

I have cinglular and use these regularly.
Something of note: YOU NEED TO GET YOUR CINGULAR PHONE UNLOCKED. They will tell you they dont do it...but after you protest they will either A) do it or B) send you to a store that does.

DO NOT USE ONLINE SERVICES TO UNLOCK YOUR PHONE.

You need to unlock your sim card before placing another sim in your phone. It allows you to go on another network without roaming.

If you are just in Italy, you can purchase either a Italian sim card or a global sim card.

Most companies (ekit, telestial, global, SBC) will get you the card before you leave so you will know your "local number" and can pass it on to people in your home country. Then, when they call you, they will call a foreign number. Calling internationally is uber cheap these days.

The ekit card allows another option. They can call and leave a vm that you can either check via the internet or over the phone.

Tons of ways to cut your costs....