We rented a cell phone in US to take to Europe. Terrible investment. Didn't work most of the time. Any solutions? What cell phone work the best to the US from Europe?<BR><BR>Connie

More and more, the consensus seems to be that the best option is to buy a pre-paid phone there.<BR><BR>Here's a very good recent thread with more information about doing so.<BR><BR>Best wishes,<BR><BR>Rex<BR>

If your cell phone service (if any) in the US is not GSM, then what Rex said for sure. If your U.S. cell phone provider *is* GSM (T-Mobile is all GSM, Cingular substantially GSM, and ATT is just starting to roll out GSM) then I would suggest getting a tri-band phone (900/1800/1900) that you can use as your regular phone in both the US and Europe. If you get an &quot;unlocked&quot; phone or can get it unlocked by T-Mobile or Cingular after a couple of months, then you can just purchase a SIM card and pay-as-you go service in Europe to use in the phone and save on international roaming.

We bougth a pre-paid cell phone that we only have to change a chip for each country. It's much cheaper that renting one everytime you go to Europe. We paid $80. for it and then put time on it. The minutes were even cheaper that using my Global Calling Card and now we have it for every trip.

Best bet is to have a phone that you can put your own sim card in. that means owning the phone outright. any triband is fine this way you can use it in the us as well. You can but a sim card at most airports. For intance in the Netherlands buy a KPN sim card. and then buy what is called 'scratch cards' to add money to the phone. You get a local number, incoming calls are free, and you'll have no problems dialing out. I had to do this I brought my voicestream phone over and it was totally unreliable, so i bought a cheap nokia for 90$ at the airport, biut a sima card for 20 and thre $20 bucks worth of calls on it. No problems what so ever. Good luck and happy travels.<BR>

topping, for Connie<BR>