Cell phone questions
 

Hi, everyone, and thanks in advance for your help. You're probably tired of cell phone questions, but I did read through other topics and didn't find an answer.

Here's the situation. We are four people (two teens, two parents), three iPhones and one ancient flip phone. We're planning a trip to UK and Germany, a few days in each place. The teens are digital natives, of course. I'm pretty comfortable with my smartphone. Husband is not comfortable with technology in general and smartphones in particular -- i.e., if we were to rent or buy him a phone in Europe, it would be stressful for him to figure out how to use it (on the other hand, he would probably be using it only to call me or the kids, so maybe that would be OK).

We've gone to Europe twice before and both times, phone-wise, we made poor choices. The first time we didn't prepare at all, so we weren't able to use our phones at all.

The second time, we talked with our Verizon rep beforehand and he said the cheapest thing to do would be to keep the phones in airplane mode and use them only when we had WiFi. We did that and it was ... OK ... but we couldn't really split up and still communicate with each other effectively. There was some frantic Twitter direct-messaging from coffee shops.

This time, we're hoping to be able to communicate with each other if we split up or get separated (the teens are pretty eager to go off on their own periodically, which I understand). The teens are also hoping to be able to stay in contact with their friends in the US, upload Snapchats, use Tumblr, Twitter, etc. -- although if necessary they could save all that for WiFi hotspot access.

Our voice use is likely to be pretty low because of the teen factor -- probably limited to periodic check-ins with their parents -- but texting and social media are likely to be high.

So with that background info, here are our questions:

1. If each of us buys a phone in the UK when we land, will it also work in Germany?

2. If we put our phones in airplane mode to block messages from the US, then we won't be able to communicate with each other unless we find WiFi access, right?

3. What are your thoughts on the $10/day fee through Verizon? This would come out to $440 which seems high...plus another $40 per month for 100 MB of data, 100 outgoing texts and 100 minutes of talk time. With two teens, we'd blast through that much data in the first couple days.

4. Verizon also has a plan (if I'm remembering correctly) where they'll mail you a compatible phone ahead of time, synched up to your "actual" phone, and you pay something like $20 for the month's service. Then when you come home, you return the phone. Thoughts on that? One of my concerns is that the data is still expensive, something like $25 for 100MB.

5. What are your thoughts on the T-Mobile Simple Choice plan? It looks like that's a flat $50 (per phone? per account?) and you have unlimited text, talk and roaming services throughout Europe.

6. What are your thoughts on subscribing to one month of unlimited WiFi usage through a company like Boingo? I read that two devices would cost $7.95 for one month of unlimited mobile Wi-Fi access.

Apologies for all the questions, but thanks for your feedback.

I would forget Verizon. I would forget Boingo.

I would think the easiest solution would be to sign up for the T-Mobile SImple Choice plan.

Barring that, if your phones aren't unlocked, I'd either get them unlocked and buy a SIM card for UK and a SIM card for Germany and switch them out when you change countries OR buy cheap unlocked phones on Amazon (I paid US$25 for an unlocked phone that holds 3 SIMs) and do the same.

I would limit the social media frenzy with the teens. Seriously, they're being treated to a trip to Europe. Tell them they can upload photos, use Twitter, etc., only when they hit a free WiFi spot (which won't be hard to find).

I recently left Verizon and went to T-Mobile specifically because it made the cell-phone while traveling internationally thing so much easier/cheaper. Worked well in the UK.

However before you race off to t mobile. They have horrid US coverage. No way would I change to them for one short trip.

The three iPhones, if they are recent models, should already come unlocked from Verizon. They only need a SIM card in UK or/and in Germany. The SIM card can even be a t-mobile USA card. You can easily test this out by trying out a non-Verizon SIM at home. My daughter had a Verizon phone, but I let her use my T-mobile USA nano SIM. The phone complained that it was not a Verizon SIM, but just ignored the message and the phone worked in the US as well as in the Netherlands.
The flip phone is probably hopeless. Just stick with your husband.

I just used Verizon on my iPhone in the Netherlands. The $10/day plan Verizon has now accesses your current plan and monthly allotment for voice/data. Mine is an unlimited plan so it cost me nothing but the $10/day to function just as I do at home. I'm not sure why you'd have to buy 100 megs more of data, 100 texts, etc. unless the plan you're on is more limited?

Friends of mine took their two teens to Italy for a month over the summer and limited their social media to wifi in hotels and cafes. They wanted them experiencing the country, not nose in the phone.

I used to have TMobile here in Boston and the coverage was disgustingly bad. While the int'l coverage is tantalizing, I won't sacrifice the day to day at home for that.

I've used T-Mobile a few times in Europe and have also bought SIM cards a few times. (T-Mobile's roaming plan doesn't cover every country in Europe, but it covers Germany and the UK.) T-Mobile's fee is also 20 cents a minute in Europe in addition to the $50/month. If your phone has WiFi calling built in, you can make calls for free on WiFi, but it sounds like you don't really care about calls much. Data is only 2G (pretty slow but usable) but unlimited.

T-Mobile doesn't have "horrid" US coverage. I've used them for years all over the United States - I even drove across the country a few years ago. (I've since left T-Mobile proper, but I'm still using my phone on T-Mobile's network with a different company.) Even in rural areas coverage is generally OK if not great. Yes, Verizon's coverage is probably better overall especially in rural areas. You would want to try it in the areas you live/work as a trial though to commit to switching to it, to make sure you get good coverage. If you get a T-Mobile phone with the "WiFi calling" feature, you can also use your phone on WiFi for free if you say have bad coverage inside your home - you can still make/receive regular phone calls as long as the phone is on WiFi.

Your current Verizon phones probably won't work on T-Mobile or not easily. The smart phones might; no old Verizon flip phone will work on T-Mobile. Plan to buy new phones.

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Personally, I'd just buy cheap unlocked Android phones here in the US before leaving and buy SIM cards in Europe. I have an unlocked Android and that's what I plan to do from now on. For US calls, I will use Google Hangouts / Google Voice, which I've already used for years. You can make free calls to the US from Europe to a US phone number when you are on WiFi or mobile data, though you have to get a Google number ahead of time before leaving the US.

(FYI, getting a local SIM in the UK or Germany means you get a local UK or German phone number.)

I've used Tmobile for years all over the US and have never had a single problem. They have good coverage every place I've been, including my home and I travel a lot in the US (out West, Florida, midwest, NEw England, everywhere). You can look at coverage maps, it certainly is not "horrid."

I don't think you need to buy new phones - just sims

simplest would be to get your iPhones unlocked - then when you arrive in the UK go to a branch of the carphone warehouse, buy a sim and put £10 - £20 worth of data on it. You'll get a new UK based phone number but can access all your apps in the usual way.

As for the flip phone, if it's old school, you'll need to check if it works outside the US before you do the above.

Buy an unlocked, sim free, budget smartphone for your husband in the US, then get him trained up on how to use it! Once in Europe he just inserts a new sim.

As someone else said, you may not even need to get your iPhones unlocked. Recent models are already unlocked for foreign use. You shouldn't need to buy any new phones, either.

You also shouldn't have to buy separate SIM cards in the UK and Germany. The EU has put severe limits on inter-EU roaming costs, and the intention is to eliminate them altogether in the near future. (It was supposed to happen in 2016, but it's been postponed.) Sometimes the providers have options that you need to activate to get these low roaming rates. I don't know the UK cell provider market, but you should find out (maybe someone on this forum knows) which companies have PAYG plans with good roaming options for the rest of the EU.

If all your husband will do is occasionally call one of the others in the group, give him the old flip phone, assuming it's GSM compatible, has at least three (or, better, four) bands, and is unlocked. For this, you should just be able to get a PAYG SIM card, without a plan for x minutes of talk. These plans usually have more minutes than most people would ever use. You can buy Europe-compatible flip phones for a song on EBay or Amazon if the one you have isn't suitable.

The iPhones may be fine in Europe, but the Verizon flip phone almost certainly will not work there - it is no doubt CDMA-only and not GSM. (Most likely it does not even have a SIM card slot.)

The industry is indeed in a state of flux. The above poster is correct. Within the eu, roaming rates have become very low and will disappear completely in the near future. The catch, if there is one, involves calls outside the eu. With the British providers, O2 is an example, you get for a £10 various buckets of benefits including one which allows you to call the US for as little as 1.5p /minute timed to the second. The catch is that while if you use this sim in Germany, you can the good intra eu rates, calls outside the eu have become asininely expensive which is what makes the t mobile deal enticing. Also on some of these UK plans, again using O2 as an example, calls within the UK are something like 40p/minute whereas using T mobile USA to make the same call costs 20¢/minute. The T mobile plan is by far the best of the US carriers for use in Europe (believe it or not it even works in Russia). Sprint has a similar plan but not as universal and both AT&T and Verizon's plans are nowhere near as good but as noted there are some questions about T Mobile coverage in the USA; certainly nowhere near as good as Verizon. In addition, as part of the T Mobile Simple Choice plan, calls to and from Mexico and Canada are considered domestic calls (unlimited texts and voice). I'm not sure any of the other American carriers have that.

If you have T Mobile it's probably the easiest way to go not to denigrate things like Google voice and skype which indeed can be cheaper. But with T Mobile, no need to sign up for anything. Turn on your phone as soon as you land and voila, you have mobile phone service for 20¢/minute as well as unlimited texts and unlimited data (although 2g). Of course many hotels today as well as Starbucks and McDonald's now have free wifi (I sit each morning when visiting London at a pret a manger with a cup of coffee doing all my surfing on the free wifi). But I would agree, if you're happy with your current mobile provider, it probably is not worth it to go with T Mobile USA for a short vacation trip to Europe.

Roaming costs don't go until July 2017. The cost of roaming in the EU does drop in May, but not all PAYG plans allow you to roam so you would need to check that.

You can see the maximum costs allowed here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europe...ng_regulations, priced in euro, but VAT must be added to the quoted fees.

<i> Also on some of these UK plans, again using O2 as an example, calls within the UK are something like 40p/minute ... </i>

That's outrageously high. No Italian provider has domestic call rates even half that high.

<<Also on some of these UK plans, again using O2 as an example, calls within the UK are something like 40p/minute ... >>

call charges like that only kick-in after you've exceed your call allowance

but OP is more keen to know about data options

Well, you can't get T-Mobile where I live in Arkansas. In fact, they don't even market here. My SIL works at T-M headquarters in Seattle and has to use the phone on wifi when he is here. There are lots of dead spots between Dallas and Little Rock on I-30.

I second the idea of having the kids use wifi only. They can and should disconnect for this trip. Wifi contact won't kill them. All the hotels and McDonald's have free wifi these days.

Yes, McDonalds in Europe do offer free WiFi, but their policy on passwords seems to vary by country. I've used it in other countries but had trouble in Germany. In Berlin last year, I tried to use WiFi at a McDonalds, but I was told on the login page that I needed to have a password texted to me. Of course, when i entered my US mobile number, no text was ever received, so I was unable to use it.

Starbucks on the other hand had no such restrictions, and I used the free WiFi at several German Starbucks (of course, I also had free T-Mobile 2G data - but it was slow).

Thanks for the feedback, everyone. I watched a video on how to replace a sim card and it looks pretty simple. I appreciate the tips and resources!

One question, and apologies if this is stupid -- if putting a UK sim card into the phone means I'll get a UK phone number, when we get back to the US and I remove the sim card, I get my old number back, right?

Thanks again.

Absotively and posilutely.

as soon as a US sim is back in the phone the US number will come back on

some smartphones are dual sim, which mean they have room for two sims and therefore two different numbers. so if you're thinking of buying a new phone at some stage that's a feature worth thinking about