I've seen people messing with their Blackberries while taking the train up to the Jungfrau.

Don't know if they were using some local SIM or just paying international roaming data charges. Or maybe it was a business phone and their employer picked up the costs.

I hear data plans are pretty competitive. For instance, you can get 1.2 Mbps HSDPA in the UK with a 3 GB limit for about 7 pounds a month.

But of course, prepaid SIMS may be a different story, if they offer data at all, much less 3G data.

We pay T-Mobile $20 a month for unlimited messaging within the family. So SMS between Europe and home don't cost anything extra.

If we want to text someone else, it costs 35¢ outbound and 10¢ (soon to be 15&cent inbound.

If we want to chat at length, we find a WiFi hotspot and use yahoo.com/voice

Broadband on a Blackberry? What on earth for?

It wouldn't necessarily be a Blackberry.

It would be a Nokia smart phone (some of which can connect to BB) which has browsers and other Symbian apps.

Or it might be a Windows Mobile or Pocket PC phone.

The idea is to use it as a supplement to a laptop or replace it.

Also, if you can run VOIP, then maybe avoid all these roaming charges. It seems Skype Out is cheaper even than local SIMS.

Yeah, except all those devices have little tiny screens that don't need broadbad. I use my iPAQ to surf WAP sites at 1.14kbps when I use my cell as a modem, and it's always been plenty fast enough.

For a laptop, broadband is entirely appropriate. But in a handheld device - I think it's a just a case of "mine's bigger" macho bragging rights.

That may be true now but more and more devices are coming out which don't limit you to WAP sites. You will still be loading sites at lower resolutions.

But when you buy these things, you're also paying for things like the ability to view and capture video for instance, for which broadband would be nice.

I don't have to have broadband BTW. I was just surprised at the pricing I read about. I could make do with GPRS but maybe Europe has converted over more to 3G than the US by now. I really don't know so I was curious if anyone had tried.

Of course the other possibility is tethering these smart phones to your laptop via Bluetooth and using them as modems. For that, mobile broadband might be nice.

I love my Cingular 8125 and use it all over the world. Once you get used to the keyboard (which is a lot nicer than a Blackberry keyboard), it's a little dream machine.

Cheapest prepaid SIM (www.aldi.de) in Germany, costs are 24ct/MB either GPRS or 3G (WCDMA/UMTS).

So you'd be using Cingular with international roaming then?

How much do they charge for data?

Cingular charges about $20/meg. tmobile charges about $10/meg. I am with cingular myself. For my international data while travelling, I just use my virgin UK payg sim which charges 5 pounds($10)/meg. They charge the same regardless if one is roaming or not. I still retrieve my imcoming SMS on my cingular sim though, since that comes out of my monthly bucket.

>$10/meg
Holy sh**, that's almost 40 times as much.

The cheapest and most effective way to surf on the road that I know of is to subscribe to T-Mobile's "T-Zones" for $5.99 a month (flat fee, neither airtime nor roaming charges apply). Any of the sites cited below can be accessed anywhere a cell signal can be sighted - no WiFi required.

Once you've connected to the T-Zones gateway, you can access thousands of WAP sites, which are mini-web sites with their content scaled down for small screens. Here are some examples (some only work with a WAP browser, so your PC might not work):

<font color="red">News and sports from home</font>

http://abcnews.mobi
http://wap.espn.com
http://m.cnn.com

<font color="red">London transport and pubfinder</font>

http://wap.tfl.gov.uk
http://www.fancyapint.mobi

<font color="red">Paris transport and Ile-de-France trains</font>

http://wap.ratp.fr
http://transilien.com/pam
http://wap.paris-live.com

<font color="red">German trains</font>

http://mobile.bahn.de

<font color="red">Airline schedules and arrivals</font>

http://www.aa2go.com
http://ua.flightlookup.com

<font color="red">Webmail</font>

http://www.gmail.com/app
http://m.yahoo.com

Are you sure T-Mobile doesn't charge per kilobyte when you're abroad. At least with a German T-Mobile card you can't use T-Zones &quot;for free&quot; when you'er abroad there's always a hefty! roaming fee. Are those fees really waived using a US SIM on T-Moblie (and other) networks in Europe? Seems I need a US T-Mobile SIM!

I used T-Zones WAP a lot when I was in Bonn in March. No extra charges except for off-network SMS.

StCirq - so glad to hear your report on the 8125 - that is what I wanted last fall when replacing my handset but it was forever out of stock so I wound up with another device (Blackberry Pearl) to which I have adapted but it sure would have been nice to have that larger keyboard.
How is the sound quality on your 8125?

10kb cost 9ct in western Europe using a German T-Mobile SIM and T-Zones. . The US SIM is a bargain at $6 a month!