I'm traveling with 3 others this july for about a month to spain, france, netherlands, germany, czech rep, switzerland, and italy. We're afraid that if we take our phones from the U.S. then we'll get slammed with high bills. We need to be able to communicate with each other in case we split off and call ahead to hotels as well, but we don't need to call back to the U.S. while we're there.

What is the best (reliable/cheap) way? I had assumed that disposable cell phones with a set # of minutes was the best, but I dont know much about them.

Thanks

You might be interested in another thread started today by pegontheroad, taking about cell phone use in europe:

http://www.fodors.com/community/euro...e-question.cfm

Someone mentioned something called Call In Europe, which is guess is a SIM card for travel ...? For Australians there is such a product called TravelSim, which allows you to use the same phone number throughout Europe for a lower price (www.travelsim.com.au). You might have a look at their website and see if Call in Europe is similar.

Lavandula

Are you from the USA or Canada? Probably no matter. Here is what you can do.

1. Go to ebay and buy 2 or 3 gsm unlocked cell phones, the cheapest you can find. Can run as little as $20 or $30. Make sure as noted they are unlocked and are quad bands (lots of cheap Motorolas there...you can pay a bit more if you want say MP3 players to listen to music or cameras).

2. While on ebay find e-kit USA simple sim card. Price is $9 with $3 shipping but it comes with $10 credit. At these prices you can buy 3 of them.

I've described the benefits of these cards before. To run through them quickly you get USA and UK numbers in one package. While in Europe you can ring the USA number for 49¢ a minute and 35¢ per call set up fee (Calling the USA number is much cheaper than calling each other's UK number as the UK number is considered a mobile number, USA calls do not discriminate against calls to USA mobile numbers)...you cal also text mail each other (you would sign in and text to the UK number pecuiliar but while oraming in Europe, you can call or text to either the USA or UK number..cheaper to call the USA number but text to the UK number as I remember the rates)....voila you can now easily communicate with each other and not have spent a lot of money! (If you run out of credit, easy to recharge via the web).....simple and inexpensive!...(BTW if your carrier in the USA or Canada is gsm, you might be able to upgrade your current phone, have the old one unlocked and use that phone as long as it has the European frequencies or even use the USA or Canadian or Australian (usually Australian phones are already GSM and will have the European frequencies; North American phones present the frequency issue)....and simply switch your current sim card for the USA simple sim card and when you return home, switch the sim cards back (the beauty of gsm over other 2g technologies) or use the USA simple card as a relatively cheap PAYG in the USA (calls to make and receive in the USA via trhe USA number are 9¢/minute, not bad but there is a 50¢ set up fee for each call made and received)...you can research the complete set of rates on the 3-kit web site but do not buy from them, buy from e-bay.

Check out callineurope.com You can have a phone in your hands before you leave for about 60 bucks.
Calls are a decent price per minute and I like that they bill to my credit card so I don't have to go looking for a SIM on a Sunday in Switzerland.
Their phone should work from all the places you plan to go.

I have used mine on 2 trips to France and one to Greece and it has worked perfectly. There may be cheaper solutions but none more convenient that I have seen.

The USA simple card from e-kit is a better deal IMHO than CIE and travelsim and is available, despite its name, to Australians. As a matter of fact, e-kit is based in Australia and in most places in Europe calling a USA number for any folks you pick up is cheaper than calling either a UK or Estonian number as calls to USA cell phones are always charged at the same rate as calls to USA landlines.

Actually Parisamsterdam, I always feel safer with PAYG as opposed to post paid for stuff like this the reason being if the phone and/or sim card is lost, all you are the hook for is the unused time (with some of the international cards going under people have lost money so it is always recommended not to keep too much money on a PAYG card and e-kit is easy to recharge so that's no problem) while I have read of c ases where a sim card has been loost and thousands of dollars literally of calls have been made and the person was on the hook for them. Just my opinion on this; if you find post paid better, that's fine.

Parisamsterdam...just out of curiosity, have you checked out e-kit USA simple cards; I don't find it in the slightest inconvenient and you simply can't go wrong at the price of $12 (assuming the $3 shipping holds to Australia via e-bay; that I am not sure about!)...not that CIE is a terrible deal but again, and I've researched plenty of them, e-kit seems to win with its idea of both a UK and USA number hands down mostly, as I noted, that in my travels throughout the world, calls to the USA are usually available at very cheap rates and calls to e-kit USA numbers, like calls to all USA and Canadian cell phones, are charged as landline calls. No heavy surcharges are imposed on calls to USA call phones...the systems can't differentiate between a call to a USA or Canadian landline as opposed to a USA (or Canadian) cell phone!

But I don't want you to think me rude...if CIE suits your purposes and you're happy that's fine.

Being the wonderful, kind human being I am, here is a listing from ebay for the sim card I refer to...http://tinyurl.com/2g2qpw9

It's an even better deal than I thought....the shipping charge is the same i.e $3 to the USA and $5 to Canada no matter how many cards you order....how can you go wrong with a $9 card with $10 of credit even if it turns out to be junk?

(BTW there is nothing listed about sending it to Australia...I would assume if you wnt to the ebay Australia web site, you might find it available there.)

Ah ha...I can't seem to get into the ebay AU web site...I keep getting directed back to the USA site....but I did get into the ebay UK site (ebay.co.uk) and found the item for £10 with £1 sjo[[omg tp Aistralia....if you use my link above for the ebay USA site, you can contact the seller there and see the price to ship to the land of oz...it isn't listed in the listing.

I can't believe how good I am to folks.

I use www.callineurope.com Happy Travels!

Nokia make a very simple and cheap handset which you can buy unlocked it's the Nokia 1208. I just bought it online in the UK for £22.99 and it's fine....83 year old Mum going great with it (and she can still do predictive text!)

I have an iphone and downloaded Skype Mobile. It allows me to call anywhere using a wifi connnection so no roaming charges. It is CHEAP and works very well when the signal is strong.

It is easy to use.

I turn off roaming before I arrive in Europe so I am not slammed with charges and I use texting for fifty cents a minute when traveling with others whom I need to be in contact with.

This is the best solution I have found to date.

xyz123,

No, I don't think you are being rude at all.
You are just presenting another option. If everyone thought the same way in this world
there'd only be one make of car, one television channel to watch, one travel forum etc... and life would be very boring wouldn't it? ;^)

But for many people the CIE solution is the way to go... why? Well, I have bought hundreds of things on eBay from iPod batteries from Hong Kong for 5 bucks to several thousand dollars for a diesel truck that was 1,000 miles from where I live. I know how eBay works and am comfortable with it... but most of the people I know have never used eBay, have no clue how it works and are sure you are bound to be ripped off should you buy something online sight unseen. So for them, buying an unlocked GSM phone on eBay just isn't going to happen.

And how many people know the difference between CDMA and GSM or how many GSM bands there are? Probably the majority.

CallinEurope makes it easy and simple and none of the above is a factor.

As for the PAYG vs billing to credit card ... I have heard that argument before and it makes no sense to me. If having the phone stolen was a concern to me I might as well leave my credit card at home too for fear someone might steal
that.

Or that CiE could spuriously add charges... then couldn't a hotel or car rental agency do just the same as they invariably have my card number before the final bill is presented?

So CallinEurope.com works for me and it works for others just fine as I'm sure your solution does too. Just different ways of doing things.

Rob

Thanks Rob.....well it's time I suppose people loearned what a money saver ebay can be. While I athink it's original purpose was for people to auction off their used goods, there arte now many merchants there who sell lots of things at very very good prices. Many Hong Kong merchants sell things like memory cards that are 100% functions at a fraction of the cost it would be from for lack of a better word a regular merchant. These are not shoddy or stolen goods. And frankly, for the most parts, I have found the Hong Kong and Chinese merchants on ebay to be very very honest and helpful. The e-kit cards sold there (there are 2 of them) are actually sold by e-kit itself and on their web site, the cards cost three or four times as much.

But no matter; people who don't look into ebay, espercially for electronic stuff, are missing the opportunity to save quite a big of money...I just bought a gsm i phone clone from ebay for $65 and it seems to work fine and do everything the i phone can do!

But again thanks for your understanding.,..

xyz123

Thank you everyone! This was a tremendous help.

A question for xyz123: you said it's 49cents a minute if I call a USA number from europe using the USA simple card. What is the rate if I'm just calling one of my travel companions on their gsm simple card phone while we're both in the same european city? Is the USA simple card still better if all of our calls are made and received in europe?

XYZ...

I just got an iPod touch and love it. Would you be so kind as to send me an eBay link for the phone you bought? If you click my username above my email is public in my profile.

Thanks!

If you call them using the USA number, as noted 49¢ per minute although don't forget the 35¢ per call set up fee....doesn't matter where they are. They will pay 19¢/minute (no set up fee) to receive, at least that's my understanding of the tariffs as listed. OTOH if you call them on the UK number, you pay 84¢/minute (with a 35¢ set up fee) although they receive for free......the way it works with this sim card, when you boot up the phone you have to enter the PIN code provided with the sim card. If you prefix the pin code with a 1, the phone knows you are in Europe but you can still receive calls on the USA number...when you're in the USA or Canada and turn on the phone, you boot up prefixing the pin number with a 2 to let the system know you are in North America. Do remember that in almost all cases, calls to a US or Canadian phone are always treated as landline calls whether to an actual landline or a cell number while throughout most of the rest of the world calls to mobile phone are surcharged above the price for a call to a landline....

You can call e-kit to verify this information. Their customer service is excellent but my reading of the tariffs suggest what I say above is correct.

parisamsterdam...

Don't have the link with me but you can go to ebay and do a search for dual sim gsm phones and several will come up!

Take a look at http://tinyurl.com/25bw3tu