I got info from FODORS travel board about how easy it would be to keep in touch with our kids by buying a phone in France. It sounded so easy and one of our children will be going to France and Spain this summer so she could have it too. I was told you could buy a phone for less than 100 Euros and then all incoming calls were free. My advice, don't do it!

Reality:
It was very easy to buy the phone but....
We went on a trafalgar tour(tour was wonderful! by the way.) Our Tour Director went with us to a phone store and still we had to make the decision of Orange system or the other (SMR or something like that). Looked great, phone service was instant and the guy who sold it changed it to read English. But.......I couldn't get the phone to actually call our home. The TD spent much time calling to find out why (to call you have to speak French). They told me to buy another orange mobi carte at a tobacco shop that I had used all my minutes (I was told it came with 20 initial minutes but found out it really was only 10 and somehow it didn't have any - whatever!). So next stop, I buy the new card with 35 minutes but then I need the TD to read the directions on how to add those minutes. Finally, I can use it. Well, our phone company (MCI) shut off all long distance service to our house in America after our home phone bill reached $400! Why? Because I didn't have a international long distance plan with them -who'd have thought! They refused to turn it back on when my Dad called because it wasn't us calling. When I got home and called them, they wouldn't turn it on until I paid them and I couldn't do it until I received a bill from the local company. What a mess! Anyway, the TD said it is best to buy some kind of ATT card because you can always get an ATT operator in France.

Thought I would tell you all. Oh and by the way, even though the phone was set for English, it went off all the time with messages in French - found someone to interpret for me so I didn't have to bug the TD anymore. What were the messages.......jokes of the day.......... By the way, to use that same phone in Spain, they all need an extra chip put in the back.

Nonsense. I've had an Orange phone for the last 4 years and it works like a charm. You set it for English, and everything, except the messages that inform you that you need to recharge and reset the phone, are in English.

You don't have to speak French to call home - you just dial the number, including the country and area code, of course.

Adding minutes is a breeze. You take the Mobicarte, scratch off the code number, dial 244 or something like that (it tells you in the detailed manual), and at the prompt, type in your code number on the keypad of the phone.Then you get a message telling you you've got X number of minutes and they will expire on such and such a date unless you recharge again.

I have no clue what your problem with MCI was or how it related to the Orange phone, but my Orange phone has worked beautifully for 4 years, cost me very, very little, and been a godsend for reaching other people in France as well as my family back home. I am always utterly amazed at how clear the connection back to the USA is when I'm hurtling along on the TGV, for example.

I may not have made myself clear.
1. Adding time is not that easy the first time because the manual is in French. Once someone else interprets this for you, you can do it easy the next time.
2. The connection was very clear once made.
3. You do not have to speak French to dial home. You do need to speak French if something is not working with your phone.
4. When you get a message in French (even though your phone is set in English), you have to understand French to get that they are messages to ignore and to read instructions as to how to not get those messges in the future.
5. Orange is not the problem with MCI. The problem was that I was told that incoming calls were free, which indeed they were for the moblie phone, but.............the charge from your long distance provider to have your kids call from your home phone is not worth it. I would have been better to use pre-bought phone cards. Or, I could have informed MCI that I was leaving and paid for international service. None of which I knew.

I think that people here need to know this before they decide that it is so very easy to buy and use the European mobile phones.

I have also used my tri-band mobile phone (purchased here), virtually hassle free in the Czech Rep, Italy, and the Netherlands, for many years. I do have a couple of different SIM cards, and reload the minutes frequently. It is not hard to do. The only problem I have encountered is trying to call my home voicemail system (ALSO MCI!!) from the Czech Republic. It works from the other countries, but not from Prague. Still haven't figured it out...

Placing calls from the US to France is always expensive without a calling plan. Something like 2 dollars a minute. Its a real rip off. It has nothing to do with the mobile. My family uses a 3rd party provider to call me from the US which costs about 4 cents a minute.

From what I understand you thought that inbound calls were free to the mobile for both you and the person calling? No that is not the case. Not really sure why you would think that placing a call from the US to France would ever be free. Maybe I have misunderstood the problem.

The number of minutes on the card represents calls placed within france. If you are calling the US the charges would be higher. Not sure why you got no minutes at all. Perhaps it came with a card that you had to enter the code first?

Concerning the fees on MCI.... When I was an AT and T customer I was able to select an international calling plan and they applied it retroactively to the ENTIRE month and rerated the international calls. I suggest you call MCI and request this before they cut your bill. Bottom line, MCI should let you sign up for an international calling plan, rerate all those calls to something reasonable. You can then cancel the plan the following month. If they really stick it to you and refuse to rerate then I would change providers. Do not wait till after the bill is cut.

Concerning the cell phone: If you need to have a mobile number with you at all times then a cell phone is the solution. It is more expensive than using a card to call home but it is of course always with you which is an advantage.

If you dont want the added expense then get an international calling card in a Tabac to call the US and call from hotel and pay phones.

Here's the scoop and this information is correct not speculative...

Most LD plans in the US charge somewhat more to call a mobile phone in France (and other European countries) then to call landlines. This goes along with the philosophy of European phone companies that the recipient doesn't pay but the caller pays.

The cheapest I have found to call France is using the alternative 1016868 system. Prefix the call with 1016868 and you pay 20 cents a minute to call a mobile in France and you can use this no matter what your chosen long distance carrier is. To call landlines in France, 1016868 charges 12 cents a minute. There are no set up costs, no minimum costs. There is a small US tax. 1016868 calls are billed on your local phone bill.

The catch is that while 1016868 has very good coverage in the US it is not universal. To see if you have it, you can make a domestic ld call with it (7.9 cents a minute). If the call goes through, you have it!

1016868 charges 7.9 cents a minute to call the UK but 13 cents a minute to call UK mobiles.

It is dirt simple to use. If the mobile number in France is 0688729961, you would dial 1016868-011-33-68729961 where 1016868 is the prefix for this service, 011 is the international call code, 33 is the country code for France, and you omit the lead 0 when calling a number in France from outside the country.

No big deal whatsoever.

Incidentally, as an aside, T mobile US charges 29 cents a minute to call any Western European country (a tad high) but has no further surcharge for calls to mobiles which is not as good as 1016868 but pretty good nevertheless.

Using the 10-10-987 plan is what I found to be the best for calling Europe. Since I have a daughter over there for six months I had to find something cheap and 10-10-987 is. I really thought it was too good to be true but I have been using it for three months now and it works like a charm. It can only be done from your home phone (I can't use it with my cell phone, or from work for example) but they really do charge only 3.9 cents a minute to France (and most of Europe) plus 39 cents connection fee. No other fees at all and the charges are on your regular phone bill, listed as "other carrier", so just one bill each month. Same charge for calling both a landline or a cell phone. I now use this even for calls in the US outside my "local" service. You can get more information at 1010987.com

Oh forgot to mention - when my daughter wants to call us she calls us and we call her right back (using 10-10-987). Originially she did this with her cell phone but found she was going through "minutes" much faster than she thought she would (given that each call only lasted a minute or so) so she bought a prepaid card that she can use from a phone booth. She thinks that works much better. She calls us from the phone booth, then we call her back on her cell phone. Obviously if she isn't near a phone booth when she needs to call she uses the cell phone, but finds it works out cheaper to do it this way. She uses her cell phone to call her friends within France, and for text-messaging, but she does find it confusing regarding how many minutes things cost (and she speaks French). She loves the cell phone but at least for the first month or so she was constantly running out of minutes when she didn't think she should be.

I'm confused by the first post and I don't understand what the problem was. I don't have a cell phone. I've never even used one, except during my vacation in Italy this past fall. I'm thinking of getting a cell phone, so I'm reading some of these cell phone threads and considering the pros and cons of either (1) getting a traditional American phone with a service contract to use only in the US, and then either buying or renting a second cell phone to use only on certain vacations in Europe vs. (2) buying a single unlocked tri-band phone either in the US or on my next trip to Europe and using different separate SIM cards for the US and for any country I may visit.

When I was in Italy, I borrowed an old cell phone from a friend and used it with a little Vodafone chip which he had gotten for me and programmed in some way. When the phone talked to me, it was in Italian. I wasn't aware of any option to change the language, but I needed the practice listening to Italian anyway. I thought it was the Vodafone chip, not the phone shell itself, that determined the language. Isn't that correct?

There was a way to ask the phone how much time I had left. I did not have a manual, probably because it was an old phone and not one I'd bought, but I figured out which buttons did what. My freinds had explained to me how the calls are charged. With this Italian Vodafone plan, incoming calls didn't count toward my minutes. Is it different with the French SIM cards? I think in the US, on most plans incoming calls are charged against your minutes. My Vodafone chip is easily renewable, so long as I do it before it expires, or it can even be done by someone in Italy who does not have the chip in his possession.

I am thinking of buying a cell phone for use in the US. If I do, I was considering discontinuing my AT&T long distance service on my land phone at home. I assumed that I'd still be able to use the house phone to make long distance calls just by using one of those cheap 10-10 connection service that I use for international calls. Is this assumption correct? I don't understand why Wonderer's family was not permitted to make international calls using one of those services even if the family had discontinued its regular long distance carrier. Or maybe I misunderstood the story.

I started a thread with cell phone questions a few weeks ago. There was some helpful info and in it there are also references to other threads that are useful: http://www.fodors.com/forums/threads...p;tid=34489025

<<Author: StCirq Message: Nonsense.>>

I, too, have such a great experience with purchasing a pre-paid phone, that I agree that the CONCLUSION is "nonsense" - - but I have a feeling that the original poster is telling the facts, as they APPEARED to happen, quite truthfully.

A sobering story about how things can go totally haywire, when you think you are traveling, well-informed, but somehow, do not realize that you are having trouble getting helpful (follow-up) info from someone knowledgeable "over there". Clearly this "TD" was NOT helpful, for something that should have been very simple.

Best wishes,

Rex

A lot of these questions are service provider dependent not so much phone related.

My advise is to buy a tri band phone in the US. T mobile is the most user friendly and you can buy a tri band from them at a great price with a 12 month contract and they will provide the unlock code after a short period as a customer. AT&T and Cingular do not provide unlock codes. However, nokia phones can easily be unlocked as the calculator for determining the unlock code is freely available on the net or there are sites that will provide the unlock code for free. Also T mobile tri bands operate on both 900 and 1800 which both might be necessary for use in Europe; since AT&T and Cingular are pushing (or were pushed as the case may be) into using 850, their tri bands are usually 850/1800/1900 which means if you are in a country where the mobile carriers use 900, you are up the creek without a paddle so to speak. Make sure your tri band phone uses both 900 and 1800 (in order words, stay away from AT&T and Cingular).

Obviously UK mobile services provide English instructions to use the phone as do Irish ones. Interestingly enough, I have had 2 Dutch phones over the past several years. Orange NL gave you the option of having everything in English while Vodafone NL allowed you to program voice mail instructons in English but everything else is in Dutch. No matter though as I have yet to meet a Dutch service provider who does not also speak near perfect English.

France? It can be programmed for many things in English but voice mail instructions are always in French (including the message after a caller receives a call and is directed to your voice mail)...also as I remember activation of a French mobilcarte for international calling is not automatic but has to be requested.

Also continuing the thread calls on French mobiles to the US are kind of expensive. You might wish to check out callbackworld.com or other call back services. In this you are given a number to call in the US. You let it ring twice and hang up. No charge to you as you have not really completed the call. Then the computer automatically calls you back on your mobile phone, no charge to you as you are receiving a call. You then can dial your US (or any other number) and the call goes through. Fairly good rates.

Or as an alternative you can buy a phone card in France say and use your mobile phone to dial the domestic number in France to access the service. You pay domestic mobile rates (in France) and then complete the call at the phone card rates.

I know I have net2phone which charges 15 cents a minute to call the US from most European countries. So when I am in France, I dial the local access number on my mobile for net2phone (00800 8728 3525) and pay a domestric French rate, I then can talk for 15 cents US a minute. With the French domestic rate (something like 0,30€/ minute, it is still somthing like $0.51/minute US but that's only when I'm out. From the hotel, making sure there are no surcharges, I can access net2phone for free and then pay 15 cents/minute. The nice thing about net2phone is that it is not country dependent, I can use it just as easily in Holland as in France but it is a tad more expensive than a local phone card; but then again how can you really go wrong at 15 cents/minute?

There are lots of other variations that are carrier depedent like do they bill by the second (Virgin Mobile in the UK does, Orange France after the first 30 seconds) etc....

What you have to do is some research on the net. Of course language problems then come into play as you would hardly expect an Italian mobile provider to have an English web site, now would you.

To Isabel...

Thanks for your info..I did go to 1010987.com.

I used the "free" cell phone from Auto Europe about a year ago and the actual phone service was from the United Kingdom (44 country code).

I have rented a car from Auto Europe for my Cote d'Azur trip in october along with the "free" phone. The "free" is only for the phone rental fee. Calls to the US are $1.99 per minute. I guess if I were to use the 1010987 service that I would have to use the UK country code of 44 rather than the France 33 since the cell phone is UK..sounds confusing, doesn't it!! I need the contact with the US almost daily..I could do as you do with your daughter..or arrange a time to be called from home (US) to me in France. I guess I could really program the # in my home remote for the quick one number dial calling. Sounds great....I will bounce this off Auto Europe Cell Phone Rental Dept. on Monday........