Has anyone purchase a cell phone from MOBAL.COM, it states that the phone is $29 with no contracts and that you only pay for phone calls made, just wondering how reliable they are.

I purchased a cell phone from Mobal a couple of years ago and have brought it to Spain and Italy. I have only a pay-as-you-go phone here that can't be used in another country. I bought the phone only for emergency use because the price of a call runs about $2.00 a minute. I believe there is a table on the Mobal web site that will give you the cost of the calls for each country.

Fortunately I have never had to use the phone, but I did turn it on frequently to verify that it was working. It always picked up the local network wherever I happened to be. So, I think it is useful to have if you don't plan to use it to chat.

We had a Mobal for several years, which we used all over Europe and in a few Asian countries. If I remember correctly, the calls to and from the US were about $1.50 a minute in Italy and Spain. Local calls and texts were cheaper. We did use it quite often for short calls, and calls were conveniently billed to our credit card. Reception was excellent - I had a conference call from Rome and nobody realized I was out of the country. No need to change SIM cards or reactivate, even if you go for months without using it.

About a year ago, my my son sadly left the Mobal on a plane. Since then, when we travel to countries where we can't use our Blackberries, we've rented phones at airports upon arrival. This is much cheaper than Mobal (especially for local calls), but you will not know your phone number in advance.

Another option, if you're just going to one or two countries, is to purchase an unlocked quad phone and purchase SIM card for the countries you'll be visiting. But I prefer renting because that way you know you will have the best local coverage. I recently rented a phone in Chile that worked in elevators and underground parking lots.

What is the rental cost? The MOCAL phone to purchase is only &29.99. We'll only need it for (2) weeks in Italy.

Not sure about the rental cost in Italy - you can check by googling. But in Chile (where I rent often) the cost is $0. You just pay for the outgoing calls.