As long as you have cancelled the contract, by calling the provider to report it stolen, and have them disable it, you are fine.

xyz123...

you are so right. I purchased a Global Sim card from US Tronics and had to buy the minimum 20 euro worth of minutes and still have 17 euro left and that is after 2 european trips. I too have to use it once every 9 months.

I then got a Lichtenstein number from Dave over at CallbackWorld. For anyone in the States to call me they just call an 800 number and my phone rings where ever I am !! No cost to them only to me and depending ont he country the cost varies but France is only .09 cents a minute. Since I have started doing this my cell phone bills are so low even though I use it just as often when I am overseas as I do when I am home.

I forgot to mention I am with cingular and have the RazrV3 and cingular gave me the unlock code.

So to anyone I suggest:
1st: Get a Global Sim Card
2nd: Get a Lichtenstein number
from callbackworld.com
3rd: Get your current phone
unlocked or buy an
unlocked phone for travel

Pat

All of the cell phones for sale in Italy are $150 and up. Here I bought a TMobile for $39 including 25 minutes air time. TMobile says the phone won't work in Italy. Is there an equivalent cell phone available in Italy that is cheap and uses prepaid rather than a contract?

I can't answer specifically for Italy but I find it hard to believe that with a little bit of looking you can't find a cheap dual band (900/1800) for aroung $40 to $50....also you might wish to try ebay (or go to a European ebay site such as ebay.co.uk and do a search...some of the merchants, by no means all of them of course, will ship to the USA at reasonably cheap rates. You can pay with pay pal.

Topping....

I've been using a Motorola tri-band for many years, both here (US) and abroad (Cz Rep, Netherlands, Italy). The phone is now a dinosaur, and I'm looking for one that will be usable on 2 continents, and also be Bluetooth compatable with my Jaguar X Type. If anyone has a suggestion, please help!
If not, I am going to try to decipher all this garble & find one that will fit my needs! Arghh! ;-)

amp322, a quadband phone should do it. I have the Moto V551 and SLVR L7 with Cingular and am quite satisfied. Now, as for pairing up with your car's bluetooth (BT), I am not sure. Both of the phones I mentioned above are BT capable, but I have not tried them with a BT capable car.

Do all these recommendations for buying cell phones in US, and buying foreign SIM cards oversseas, apply for an extended stay? We will be in France for 10 months, and were planning on just getting a cell phone over there, but know their incoming rates are ridiculous. Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

In general, it is very difficult for a foreign visitor to get a contract which is the alternative to pre paid in most European countries...you need some sort of credit history, an employment log, an equivalent of a US social security number so the direction you will probably have to go is prepaid sims. But where did you get the idea incoming rates are high? Incoming calls are always free on just about all European prepaid gsm networks.

glk11b,
TIM stores are offering a phone with SIM card and 5 euro talk time for 39 euro.

Henry