logos999

It's still a long way to go before legislation will be passed. They're holding a public consultation right now, where the phone comanies can state their point of view and why they think those charges are not abusive. Do send them an E-mail, you're asked as well! This will lead to a proposal by the comission in summer. T-Mobile is a brand name of "Deutsche Telekom". A few years ago, when they decided to go international, they remamed it from T-Mobil to T-Mobile . It's still the former monopolist who is known not only to rip off people as much as they can, but also play unfair games with their competitors. They own the infrastructre. Why would you use them, if there's an alternative?

http://europa.eu.int/information_soc..._2nd_phase.pdf

xyz123

At the time, about a decade ago, the explosion of mobile phones in the US was beginning....plans had very limited minutes and restrictions on calling areas...you bought a plan for the NY area, for example, and paid ld rates as well as air time rates to call outside the NY area, much as you did with landlines in the USA.

A small company in the NYC area called Omnipoint, I believe, advertised the fact that their plans had more minutes and allowed free long distance all over the country. I knew nothing about mobile phones; as I said it was a novelty at that point. Omnipoint became Voicestream and still the thought of international use never crossed my mind...T Mobile bought them out in the very late 90's and changed the name to T Mobile US and at that point, I began trying to learn about using the mobile phones internationally and quite frankly at that point, T Mobile US was the only GSM carrier in the US and they did allow international roaming and their phones were compatible with European ones and they were very loose with unlocking codes and the rest, so they say, is history.

Quite frankly, Verizon a CDMA carrier, is the largest carrier in the USA and probably has the most coverage...Cingular which bought out AT&T Wireless Service was very late to the GSM game in the early 00's and after their merger with AT&T really began building their GSM network but as noted their key frequency is 850 which upset the apple cart so to speak with tri band phones...if you are a Cingular customer you must have both 850 and 1900 (they have some towers on 1900) which only leaves room on the tri bands they sell for one other world frequency. So I haven't switched...T Mobile US works fine for me as I rarely stray in the US outside the large urban areas and their plans, in the US, have the most minutes and the most little fringes (unlimited weekends, nights, 1500 any time minutes)...

But they have really screwed their customers with their asininely high international roaming rates...it should cost no more than 30¢/US to receive a call while roaming on an international network, anything above that is pure extortion.

Incidentally, have you heard that much of this anti international roaming fees are being led by the Irish and that recently both O2 IE and Vodafone IE have abolished all roaming rates in Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK on their networks (of course they own the corresponding networks in the UK)?

I do believe these companies have done everything in their power to sabotage operations such as riiing but there is too much momentum now and international roaming rates in the eu will be drastically slashed, the only question is how much.

Diane

I just called Cingular this morning to add the International calling package to my triband phone because I will be leaving for France next week. The information from an earlier poster is correct: Cingular has just changed their policy and you now have to keep the World Travel Package for a minimum of 6 months (at $5.99/mo) and your calling rate is .99 per minute.

Alternatively, you can have Cingular turn on the International Roaming service at no cost and your calling rate will be $1.29/minute. There is no monthly fee.

By the way, in either case, no SIM card is required.

I decided to use Cingular's International Roaming service since I want the cell phone just for emergencies or a quick call home when I can't get to a regular phone. I will purchase a pre-paid calling card at a newstand when I get to France and use that most of the time to take advantage of the much lower rates!

Diane

repete

hipvirgo:
XYZ is the expert, and I haven't run into an incoming charges while in the country of origin, I've used TIM, Orange, Vodaphone and Cosmote. As always, there might be some exceptions.

Diane:
You have a SIM card. Cingular, as a GSM service, has one in your phone right now.

A $36 fee and a buck a minute isn't that great of a deal if you use the phone a lot, especially if you're also paying for incoming minutes.

But I'm generally a budget traveler who makes a lot of calls back home. If I'm calling home for a long conversation, I'll call and then have my family call me right back on Vonage, which makes the calls dirt cheap.

Doing it that way, I can get a SIM with 10 Euros of credit for about 20 bucks and it will last a long time. My Vonage rate to Europe is 4 cents a minute to most places.

But I realize many folks are not this cheap ... I spend the saving on better wine.

Diane

Repete,

I should have been more clear when I said "no SIM card required."

What I meant was no additional european SIM cards required. As you state, the SIM card that's already in the phone will work (at least with Cingular).

Diane

vickyg215

I spoke with my carrier, Cingular, since I'm going to Italy next week. The representative advised me to rent a phone with the sim card. She also said to leave my phone at home even though I didn't plan to use it or turn it on. She said if someone called and left a message on my voice mail, I would be charged the international roaming rate, even if I didn't get the message until I got home. So guess I will just rent and leave my phone at home.

repete

For the price of renting, you can buy one. Plus many of the rental outfits try to stick you with more expensive SIM packages.

xyz123

vickyg...

The only thing I can think of is that the phone you have does not have either of the international frequencies (900, 1800), your phone could be a US model only (850,1900) which is why the customer service rep is telling you to leave the phone home; anything else and this customer service rep is an imbecile....she or he should be signing you up for international roaming which is hardly a great deal if you really want to use the phone but sure beats renting a phone.

As far as renting a mobile phone in this day and age, it is moronic unless this is a one time three or four day trip. The price of a decent dual band (900,1800) has dropped to the point that it is far far better to own the phone than to rent the phone...couple that with a local prepaid Italian sim card which you can easily purchase (not of this convenience garbage some know nothings throw out) at any mobile phone store and you will have a real working mobile phone with free reception of calls throughout your entire stay in Italy with lots of ways to make inexpensive calls home.

It's just a case of doing a little research and doing the smart, economical thing.

justretired

A question: <b>How long is a &quot;TIM&quot; SIM card valid if not used?</b>

I have a GSM phone and an Italian SIM card from &quot;TIM&quot; (http://www.tim.it). It was last used last June, and I'll be going to Italy in a couple of weeks. French SIM cards I've had in the past retained their phone number for one year of non-use, so if the TIM card is the same, I should be OK (I understand I'll have to recharge it).

I've looked over the TIM web page, but I've been unable to find what the period of validity is. I can read Italian, but I can't &quot;scan&quot; it quickly like English, so I might have missed it somewhere.

Does anyone know the answer to this?

- Larry

Statia

justretired, the SIM and TIM cards are generally valid only 90 days after the last use. That has at least been my experience with cards in the US, the West Indies and Italy.

Fibonacci2358

Justretired;

TIM Sim cards are valid for twelve months plus one extra month when you can receive calls but not make them. You can &quot;renew/extend/recharge&quot; your card online at the TIM website, I've been told.

Checkout www.prepaidgsm.net

justretired

Thanks, Fibonacci2358. The web page you referred me to confirms your information regarding the longevity of the SIM card. This means my SIM card should be valid when I arrive in Italy, and I'll have a known telephone number. I'll only have to recharge it.

I don't think I can recharge it in advance at the website, however. The TIM website at www.tim.it requires a login name and password, which has never been established for my phone. And the site says, &quot;<i>Per garantire la massima sicurezza e riservatezza, la Password TIM pu&ograve; essere definita solo dal proprio telefonino</i>&quot;, which translates to &quot;To guarantee maximum security and confidentiality, the TIM password can only be defined through the mobile telephone itself&quot;. This means I can't establish a password until I get the phone into Italy (the phone does not connect to any service here in the US - it just displays &quot;<i>ricerca</i>&quot; (&quot;searching&quot).

But once in Italy, I should be able to establish a password by following the procedures on the TIM web page. Then, when I return, I'll be able to log in to my account, recharge it to extend the life of the SIM card, and so on.

By the way, why did you choose &quot;Fibonacci&quot; for your Fodor's screen name? I'm one of the inventors of a coding method for barcodes or serial data transmission/storage which is based on the Fibonacci numbers. It's thus called the &quot;Fibonacci Code&quot;. If you're at all curious about it, see my web page at:

http://lkrakauer.home.comcast.net/fibonacci.htm

Thanks for your help.

- Larry

aeiger

Hi
I don't know what cell phone service you have, but I have Cingular and just bought a new Sony Ericson from them that's a quad band phone. All the phones from Cingular work in europe but the quad band is supposed to work in most of the countries.

justretired

Thanks for the info, aeiger. But I use a different carrier.

In Europe, which is big on standards, the countries got together and agreed on a standard mobile phone technology, called &quot;GSM&quot;. GSM is the technology in which the phone number and the cellular carrier are specified by the small &quot;SIM&quot; card that you put into the phone (&quot;SIM&quot; = &quot;Subscriber Identity Module&quot.

In the Wild West tradition of the US, companies routinely ignore international standards, and do whatever they want. The result was the profusion of different technologies we have in the US, so that when you change cellular carriers, you often have to buy a new phone.

In the US, Cingular uses GSM technology, although the frequency bands used aren't exactly the same as the frequencies used in Europe. But since the basic technology is the same, it's not hard to build a quad-band phone which can be used in both the US and Europe. That accounts for the phone you have.

However, my carrier is Verizon, which I choose because I've found them to have the best coverage in my area (Boston, Massachusetts), and, I think, in the US in general. But Verizon uses CDMA technology, so my Verizon cell phone is worthless in Europe. So a few years ago, I bought a second phone, a GSM phone made by Motorola, which I use in Europe.

GSM stands for &quot;Global System for Mobile [communications]&quot;, and CDMA stands for &quot;Code Division Multiple Access&quot;.

- Larry

logos999

&gt;companies routinely ignore international standards
I have to defend Motorola in that matter. The conference was international and US delegates were there too. The other nations except the US delegation agreed to use those &quot;European&quot; frequencies for GSM. They claimed those frequencies where military use only. However Motorola BEGGED the US delegation up to the point that this would mean a severe disadvantage to them and the US phone industy and was very much in favor of the European standard, Just that the politicians didn't listen...

justretired

logos999, thanks for the information. I didn't know anything about that history.

But nor was I trying to say that the proliferation of technologies in the US is necessarily bad. It has positives and negatives. Everything in life is a tradeoff.

On the good side, by letting the marketplace settle on the best technology, we tend to get a better result than anything that can be thought up by a standards committee, since the standards committee can't think of all the ramifications of their choices (and are often politically driven, to boot).

On the bad side, letting the marketplace decide costs the consumer more while the winner settles out, and saddles consumers who make losing bets with worthless equipment. Also, the marketplace doesn't always decide on the merits. It settled on VHS as the standard VCR tape cassette, whereas many engineers feel that the Beta format was (slightly) technically superior. The marketplace sometimes decides for purely marketing reasons.

We usually carry one of our US cellphones on our trips, just to be in contact at the airport until we leave (what if the flight is canceled at the last minute? nice to have a phone). It then travels with us, worthless, until we return, when we can start using it again as soon as we land. It would be nice to have a single phone that worked in both places, but that's not important enough to me to get me to change carriers. I've got a family with four phones on a Verizon share plan, and a change would require us to purchase all new phones.

- Larry

Statia

I'm really surprised to find out the 12-month period on the TIM cards in Italy. Every time I have gotten one in Venice or Rome, I have been told that the card and number will expire 90 days after the number is no longer used to make or receive calls.

I've also been told the same 90 day issue with the SIM cards I buy here at home and in the US.

justretired

Statia, I don't know what the discrepancy is. There are different types of service that can be bought, so perhaps that's it.

This SIM card was purchased by my sister for a trip in June, 2005, with the intention of sharing it with us for our trip in September, 2005 (she also borrowed our GSM phone). But for medical reasons, our trip was delayed until now.

I just tried an experiment. Using GlobalPhone, I just called my Italian cell number, to see if I would get to a voice mail box, indicating that the number is still active. Unfortunately, what I got was a blast of recorded Italian that I couldn't understand. Well, it started with a slow, automated readback of the cell number, which was no problem. But then, as it went on, not only was it spoken rapidly, the quality was very poor. I can usually understand a good deal of spoken Italian, but I think a native speaker would be needed to figure out what was said on this one.

We'll see what happens when we get to Italy in a few weeks, and I'll ultimately report back on the forum.

The experiment was not a total waste, because it revealed that the credit card used by my GlobalPhone account had expired, and I had to give them a new number.

- Larry

Fibonacci2358

Justretired

That's really cool about your work in serial data transmission. I'll check out your website.

Years ago (back in the 70's) I read an article in Smithsonian about the Fibonacci series and have been fascinated by it ever since. I'm in the project consulting business and even designed my logo based on the 1:1.6180339...ratio. (intersecting orthogonal &quot;golden&quot; rectangles) One of the most fascinating things to me is the square of 1.61803399..being 2.61803399..

In addition, Fibonacci was Italian and I like almost everything about Italy. I don't have any Italian heritate ..(18th century Scot-Irish and German ancestor immigrants)...

I recently saw a thread on Slowtrav.com about renewing SIM cards over internet... I used Vodafone last year when I was there (someone else's phone and card) and plan to use either WIND or the Vodafone EASY DAY plan (at the recommendation of the prepaidgsm guy). I would go with WIND but I'm concerned about the triband Motorola V66's (that I plan to use with my group of 4 couples) not getting good coverage with Wind because of their use of the EGSM frequencies.

basingstoke1

Check with globalphone. They have several less expensive options for your existing gsm phone. I believe the call back option is least expensive but I don't recall the cost. You can also buy a sim card over the internet that is good for specific countries that is loaded with a certain number of minutes that can be added to. There is another sim card available that can be used for multiple countries but the per minute cost is higher.