Cell Phone Coverage in Greece?
 

Hi All - Can anyone comment on the quality of cell phone coverage in Greece? I would like to carry a cell phone while I am travelling, but my current phone is not GSM enabled, so I will have to rent one.

Verizon has a Global Travel Program which is cost effective to get a global phone, but before I do this, I want to ensure that I will be able to get coverage in the areas in which I am travelling. I will be headed to Santorini, Mykonos and Crete - and Athens, but I suspect I won't have any issues there.

I believe Verizon partners with Vodafone on this if that matters...Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks!!

I can't speak to Verizon, but we have a phone from www.mobal.com that we have used in Greece, China and France and it works great. No monthly fee - only pay for calls made. Works for us.

I just found this site to be helpful as well -
http://www.cellularabroad.com/greeceRcell.php#rates. Let me know how your rates compared to this. Thanks.

There is excellent cellphone coverage throughout Greece, including most of the islands, and even at sea in the Aegean. Mykonos, Santorini, coastal Crete (and of course Athens) will be fine. You may encounter some local dead spots in mountainous Crete. Cosmote has the best overall coverage, but Vodafone-Panafon is also good.

Thanks for the reply!!

The plan Verizon offers is $9.99 for shipping, no fee for the rental itself and then 99 cents a minute for usage. I thought that was pretty good...They will also transfer my regular cell # to my phone so that anyone who needs to reach me from the US will only have to dial my usual cell #. This could be bad if work tries to reach me :-) But good for the family...

Are there other companies I should try before I sign up with Verizon?? i.e, should I call Cosmote? I have never heard of them...

Companies offering cellphone service in Greece can be found here: http://www.gsmworld.com/roaming/gsminfo/cou_gr.shtml

Whichever service you sign up with will be using one of those providers. There are many Fodor's threads on cellphones in Europe - do a search to help you decide the best way to go. One advantage of setting things up before your trip is knowing your cellphone number in advance. Check to see if there is a charge for incoming as well as outgoing calls.

Last summer I bought a Cosmote sim, but already had a GSM phone, so it was simply a matter of taking out my UK sim and putting in the one for Greece. I'm not sure it was worth the bother, though. This summer I am probably just going to use my Vodafone UK sim, which will cost me about 75¢ US per minute.

lmavolio,

I could be looking at the wrong Verizon web page, but this one:
http://b2b.vzw.com/international/Glo...pe/Greece.html
cited US$1.29 per minute, a 30% increase over your quoted rate (!).

European phone companies charge the full cost of a call to the *caller*, and none to the receiver.

But, US companies charge BOTH caller and receiver for airtime -- check which applies to the Global Verizon plan, or you could be billed a lot more $$ than expected.

Note: Vodaphone is more than a Verizon Wireless "partner" -- German Vodaphone and US "regular" Verizon each own about 1/2 of Verizon Wireless.