xyz123, thanks for your thoughtful and thorough reply. This December trip, however, is to Italy. I'll be meeting my sister there and she is traveling from England.

Could I buy a Virgin mobile (or something similar) in Italy? It sounds like a deal. I think I'll just wait until I get there and if I pass an electronics store I'll take a look at what's on offer.

Actually, it's not so terrible...mobile phone prices in Italy are pretty cheap and so are sim packs and getting phones unlocked in Italy is fairly simple.

So...

Go into an Italian mobile phone store and buy the cheapest phone possible along with a sim pack...italian sim packs as noted are very cheap. This will be your phone in Italy along with an Italian number.

Once again, roaming rates are high within Europe at present so it would be expensive to use the Italian sim card in the UK but as noted, UK sim cards are all but free and with an unlocked phone all you have to do is buy the sim pack...either Virgin Mobile or Mobile World as noted.

When you change the sim card in the phone, a simple simple matter, your number changes from an Italian one to a UK one so you will have to notify people of the 2 different numbers...hardly an insurmountable problem in this day and age of internet and text messaging.

The three carriers in Italy are TIM, WIND and Vodafone IT....they're pretty much the same and as noted, sim packs in Italy are cheap...you can check actual prices on www.prepaidgsm.net in the operators section...or you can pose a question in the Europe forum there and I know the forum moderator is Italian and he might have suggestions as to which Italian carrier is best. I know the UK carriers and would go with either Virgin Mobile or Mobile World.

best thing I've done this year was to cancel my verizon contract and picked up a LG quad band phone from cingular. Since we travel overseas quite a bit during the year, I also signed up with their international roaming plan which was 4.99 a month (I was told that I could cancel at any time) - free roaming while in Europe and phone calls are $1.29/min.
In previous years, we've always rented a phone from the U.S., dealt with other people's cologne and had to call forward my phone number to the rental before departure - plus remember to send it back as soon as we got home or get dinged for extra rental days.

We were in Spain recently and the cingular phone was fantastic - I was able to access my voicemail without dialing a 12 digit overseas number (usually UK), access codes, etc.
I was also told that thru the web - cnet has links on their website - there are posts advising how to "unlock" certain phones, so you could pop in an overseas prepaid sim card .

The topic is covered in other threads...

Using Cingular and T Mobile, the other US GSM carrier, international roaming is a simple alternative and yes it works very very well and if you have a tri band phone with one of the European frequencies, you will in most parts of Europe with international roaming enabled be able to register on a European network and make and receive calls without having to worry about another phone number and scaring people off with the myth that it is expensive, these days, to make an international call.

Hving said that...99¢/minute rounded up to the next highest minute, is a lot of money and if you're away for 2 weeks at a time and receive or make 1 quick 5 minute call every night we're talking $70.....if you believe the phone is just for emergency use and don't really intend to use it, that's fine, simple, neat and it will work without any hassle.

But if you really feel the need to have a functioning mobile phone...if y0u're like me and like to keep in touch with friends and family while travelling, it is far better to bite the bullet. As noted, it might only be necessary to have your US GSM phone unlocked, and apparently both Cingular and T Mobile will provide unlocking codes. Once the phone is unlocked, it is a simple matter to buy a local sim card if you're going to be in one country for a while, switch the sim cards. With GSM phones, the phone number, company, rates, are all controlled by which sim card is in the phone...when you come back home, switch the sim card back (those using Verizon as their carrier in the US are out of luck as Verizon using a completely different technology called CDMA; those need to buy their own phone).

Having said that, there are reasons a tri band phone from either Cingular or T Mobile might not be the right choice (in short tri band phones being issued recently by the 2 carriers lack the 900 band which might be a problem with certain carriers in Europe although not all that much of a problem when using the phone for international roaming)..quad band phones resolve that issue.

The point is buying an unlocked gsm phone with the European frequencies in this day and age is a simple matter...many are available on the net and also in foreign countries (although getting them unlocked can involve some extra work on your part)...renting a mobile phone in the 21st century for the most part is like throwing money away, especially if you travel outside the USA more than once in a millenium.

Finally, there are international sim cards which give you free reception of calls throughout all of western, central and Eastern Europe west of Russia. I and others have described the virtues of United Mobile on other threads (do a search for United Mobile)...couple that with an account from callbackworld (www.callbackworld.com) and indeed you can easily have

1) Free reception of calls throughout all of Europe west of Russia, South Africa, China and Australia.

2. Calls back to the USA for 14¢/minute timed in 6 second intervals, no more of this raised to the next highest minute.

3. An 800 number which with a pin that you can give to your friends and neighbors allow them to call you toll free from the USA with you only paying the 14¢/minute timed in 6 second intervals noted above.

Today, it is a very cheap and economical way to go but as I said with the eu moving in direction of cutting down international roaming fees within Europe, there might be cheaper alternatives in the near future.

There's also VOIP and phone cards that will work also.

And to keep in touch, if you and a friend or family are both on a trip, and you don't want to spring for a local sim, using Cingular and/or T Mobile will enable you to text message each other for relatively little too.

New to this board but here's my quick story about cell phone use in Europe. Due to a sudden emergency, I had to buy a cell phone while in Italy to call back to the US (and to be reachable from the US.)
I purchased a cheap Samsung phone in Sicily --about 49 Euros -- and a SIM card (I think it was from TIM) with 50 Euros prepaid. The phone worked great -- I was informed that ALL incoming calls to the phone were free for me, and that calls to the US were 50c per minute, which seemed reasonable. I never had a single problem either receiving or making a call. One added bonus is that we were able to make local calls in Italy without using the crappy phone booths that often don't work.

Good to hear a success story, and an easy solution.

I'm meeting my sister from England in Venice this Friday, and she has two prepaid phones that she's bringing for us. I don't know how that will work, but they're for emergencies only, to contact one another if we separate, so if this solution works out, it doesn't cost me anything. And I can still buy a phone, as you did, if needed.