Cell Phones
 

What is the best way to make cell phone calls while in Europe (France and Italy)? Should I buy a cheap phone when I get there?

Yes, buying a phone there will cost you less than taking your phone from home and paying roaming charges.

You might also have a look at

http://www.callineurope.com and http://www.roamsimple.com

Both offer decent prices on calls and you have a phone in
hand with instructions in English before you leave home.
I have a phone and SIM from CiE I have used on 3 trips to
Europe and it's been flawless. I also have a Roam Simple
SIM in another unlocked phone awaiting a tryout on the next trip.

Skype works well, if you are taking a laptop and have internet access. Also, we bought a unlocked tri-ban phone from Ebay. When we got to London, Paris, etc. we bought a sims card for it. If traveling from country to country, be sure to put enough minutes on the phone to last from country to country unless you are willing to buy a sims card in each country. Have the person who you buy the card from install it and set it up. It will be in French or Italian if bought in that country.You cannot use a US credit card to add minutes to a sims card. At lease we could not. Bought sims in UK, worked fine. Went to France, phone worked fine til we ran out of minutes. Could not add minutes using US credit card at Orange store or on the phone. I had to buy a new chip in France. Now, I have a tri-ban phone when I go back to use or loan to friends going over.

Just to clarify one thing from the last post....you can buy more minutes for a UK sim card if you use vodafone uk....rates are similar to Orange UK now (you have to set up cheap calling in the UK) but you can use SFR vouchers in France to add minutes to the vodafone uk sim card...the only thing be aware that if you leave the UK, calls outside the eu will be very expensive to make....the eu is working on making roaming within the eu as cheap as they can...their eventual aim is to have a system where you don't pay to receive a call while within the eu on any eu sim card and to make fairly cheap calls within the eu (they're not there yet) but indeed with vodafone, you can buy additional minutes in any eu country which has a local vodafone subsidiary.

Depends how much you travel. We bought 2 phones last year for our 2 month stay in Italy. We bought the cards from Brightroam for just Italy. After an activation fee of I think $10 each phone, you just pay for the calls you make and it gets charged to your credit card. Last month reactivated both phones for $20 worldwide as we were traveling to 6 countries. Works out really well and comforting for my husband and I to each have a phone. I will say we split up a lot, so it's really convenient.

For my trip ot Turkey I took my unlocked Motorola RaZr and bought a SIM card with minutes from local provider (national carrier), and re-charged it at cell store when needed.

That way, you are using your phone, and paying what locals pay for phone calls, versus a service company that charges for doing this for you. You will have a new phone number of course.

Thanks everyone.

I use www.callineurope.com. It's worked just fine and I like having the phone set up before leaving home in case I have to use it upon arrival at CDG. Happy Travels!

Bic now sells cell phones for 29€ including 30 minutes of calling time, rechargeable with Mobicartes from Orange.