Mobal Cell Phone
 

Anyone here have any experience with the Mobal Cell Phone service?

http://www.thetravelinsider.info/roa...obalrental.htm

The phone costs only $49, and while the per-minute cost is very high, it seems like the least costly and most hassle-free option for someone who wants a phone in Europe only for emergency or occasional use.

I'd be interested in hearing from anyone who has used this service. We'd be planning to use it, initially at least, in Italy.

I found it very worthwhile to buy a pre-paid phone instead of renting. For about 80 euro (which would typically include the first 25 euro of calls in the price), you can get a nice low rate per minute (I didn't even use up the minutes included with the purchase, during an eight day trip in 2001 - - the incoming calls didn't use up ANY of the minutes).

And then "sell it forward" (here on this forum) when you come back. I got $55 (of the $80 purchase price) back on mine - - a win-win for me and the buyer.

Best wishes,

Rex

Rex, where did you buy your cell phone -- in the US or Europe? The cheapest one I have found online in the US (not buying used) is $99, which does not include a SIM card -- that would be another $40 or $50.

How many minutes of use would you say were included with the 25 euro (minutes within the country, not to the US)?

I don't know how many minutes (for calls within Italy) that represented - - hundreds, I suppose? There were still over half left when I went back home and sold it onward. I mostly used it to call home, for calls of one minute or less - - and then my wife would call me back, at no "charge" (i.e., no use of the pre-paid time that came with the phone).

Others have suggested that "free" (incoming) calls to a pre-paid phone with this kind of "billing" results in higher costs to the caller. I learned about this (supposition) well after the fact, and cannot comment on whether the calls my wife made to me were more expensive than usual or not.

Calls made to "free" mobile lines generally are indeed much more expensive than calls to landlines.

Many of the so call 101 alternative services advertise rates as low as 3 or 4 cents a minute to the UK but charge close to 30 cents a minute to call a mobile line.

1016868 charges 7.9 cents a minute to call landlines in the UK but 13 cents a minute to call mobile lines.

One exception is T mobile which charges 29 cents a minute to call Western Europe from the US no matter whether you are calling a land line or a mobile line.

Thanks for the information ... I'm still wondering if there is a source within the US for a cell phone that can be used in Europe, costing not much over $100, including at least some air time?

I'd rather not deal with trying to buy a phone in Italy, and so far the $49 Mobal looks like the best deal to me (even with the very high per-minute cost). I can't imagine that we'd be using more than a few minutes of talk time in the 2 weeks we'll be there, as we don't anticipate the need to call the States. If we did, we'd get a prepaid phone card, as we have in the past.

The best and the least expensive way to do this is to buy an "unlocked" phone on e-Bay. When you get to Italy, walk into any mobile phone store and tell them you want to buy a pre-paid card that comes with a sim card. I'm sure if you ask nicely, the sales agent will put the sim card in for you. The cards usually start around $25 with tons of minutes.

The best part about this? Next time you go yo Hong Kong, London, Moscow you take the same phone and repeat the process and you have a phone there, or wherever you will travel in the future.

Unlocked phones on e-bay could be had for less than $100. The phone will be yours to keep and could be used anywhere you travel, with a local sim card and some pre-paid minutes.

By the time you figure rental, shipping, minutes you will find that option quite expensive. IMHO renting cell phones for travel is NOT a good option.

Take a look at www.expansys-usa.com. Some really good prices there for some really good unlocked GSM phones.

If you rent a car from AutoEurope.com, they give you a free cell phone and free activation. You are just responsible for airtime.

We rented from World Roam for trips to the UK, Paris, and Bermuda. Phone was shipped to our house and activated/deactivated on dates we provided. The fee was 2.95/day, $1.49/ minute; calls made from US to UK on cell were free. You must, however, have Verizon as your carrier.

http://www.rentaphone.co.uk/bauk/about.htm

Re: "If you rent a car from AutoEurope.com, they give you a free cell phone and free activation. You are just responsible for airtime."

Well, free is a matter of definition. The "free" rental phone from AutoEurope actually costs $40 for delivery and packing. So for $9 more from Mobal (free delivery) I could own a phone -- true, with high per-minute rates, but as I said, we don't really expect to use it much. The Mobal plan seems to have the advantage of simplicity -- there is no activation or monthly fee, and you do get a permanent phone number that you can give out for emergencies. Apparently, they simply charge each call you make or receive to your credit card.

I just wish I could find someone who has used it to tell me if it's really as good as it sounds.

We are trying to tell you but I guess you don't want to hear.

When you have unlocked phone, there are no activation fees, expensive minutes, no monthly fees, etc.

You are buying a pre-paid card and start to use it on your own phone as much or as little as you want. How much more simplistic can it get? Minutes are cheap, LOT cheaper than what you will end up paying on your rental.

Anyway, if you just want to know if the phone will work? YES.
But don't be surprised if the cost will be higher than what you thought. The expensive minutes get you very quickly.

Good luck!

Have a great trip!

I think that AAFF is right on this...

and as for...

<<we don't anticipate the need to call the States. If we did, we'd get a prepaid phone card, as we have in the past.>>

I think that you may not fully appreciate how nice it is to be able to call from anywhere, anytime as you can on a mobile phone - - from your room (hotel, villa, wherever), from public transportation, from a restuarant, while shopping, etc. - - until you get to experience how liberating that makes your trip.

Calling from a public phone, or hoping you can use a calling card from the phone where you are sleeping simply does not compare.

Perhaps this has been covered, but I signed up for service on AT&T Wireless for the GSM network and purchased a Motorola Smartphone that works great in Europe. You need to enroll in the AT&T Universal Network (or something like that) before you travel. The GSM network is still being built out in the USA so it is not as reliable as your present cell phone.

Thank you AAF...

Once you've had a mobile phone in Europe while travelling you will discover just how valuable it is; especially if you use a European pre paid.

You can be reached 24/7. In this modern day of e mail and internet cafes, you simply e mail to your friends and family your local pre paid number. Or you can send them inexpensive text messages.

Using pay phones is becoming more difficult more so in Europe than in the US because mobile phone use in Europe is eons ahead of the US. It is an everyday thing for Europeans to use pre paid plans and when travelling from one country to another, getting local SIM's. This hopefully will change in the near future when international roaming rates become much more reasonable.

I am also don't understand this business of what a hassle it is to get a pre paid SIM in Europe. Nothing can be simpler. When you arrive at your first hotel, ask the concierge where the nearest mobile phone store is. Chances are it will be within 2 or 3 blocks as they are all over the place. If you don't already have one, they will sell you a perfectly useful GSM dual band phone; perhaps without all the whistles some of us want on our phone but a phone that will make and receive calls. They will almost surely help you insert the SIM card, help you realize just what your mobile phone number is and even set up voice mail. In many but not all European countries, having the menus set to English is not a problem and voila within 15 minutes you will walk out of the store with a mobile phone with a local phone number.

Now if you meet somebody out on tour who tell you about a great restaurant, you can look up the restaurant in your guide book and call for reservations. If you are driving and heaven forbid need assistance, you can call from the car (just like I will not allow my daughter to go out without a mobile phone...you really think you want to start looking for a public phone booth to get help?)

Your friends and family can reach you24/7...you can even use your calling card to make cheap calls back home. It couldn't be more simple.

And as others have pointed out, guess what. If you go back to Europe next year, or your kids go, or your relatives go, you can loan them the phone. I won't go into the nuances of unlocking phones and other things. Click on my screen name above and you can read the practical hints I have given out for free over this forum during the past couple of month; advise that is 100% accurate I might add.

The problem, I am afraid, is that some of us just don't want to accept or want to understand 21st century technology. We are on the cusp of a tremendous revolution when we will all have 1 universal phone number which can reach us 24/7. I really have that now as I can forward calls to my home phone to either my mobile phone while travelling in the US or to my 800 call number which I can program to forward to my European phone no matter what country I am in. And the technology works. It makes you feel that you are always in touch.

Yes I know some of the naysayers will start up with this who wants to be reached when on holiday or I don't have a mobile at home so why should I have one when travelling. But once you've stuck your big toe in the water, you will want to jump right in.

It's simple, it's neat and it's really 21st century like. Don't be put off by those people who talk about not wanting the hassle of getting a pre paid SIM or throwing their money away on a rental. Join the 21st century' you'll be gland you did.

I really am not anti-technology in the least. I've been using personal computers for over 20 years. We will be traveling to Italy with a wifi laptop, and 2 out of 3 places we are staying have free net access. So emailing or IM will not be a problem, and for most communication back home, I'd rather do that.

By the way, the first place we're staying is an agriturismo out in the countryside, so we probably wouldn't have an easy opportunity to get a SIM card until we've been in the country for a few days. That's another reason I'd like to arrive in Italy with a phone that would work right off the plane.

I've had a cell phone here in the US for several years, but I'm not one who uses it to chat. In fact, I rarely use the phone at home -- even when communicating with my family on the other coast, we generally use video iChat.

Also, when in a country where I speak the language badly and understand it even less well, I would rather not communicate by phone myself -- I'll ask the hotel to make restaurant reservations for me. So I just can't see myself spending a lot of time on the phone while we're traveling.

My husband and I each have cell phones that work well in the US, and we don't want to sink a lot of money into a Europe phone for a short trip, when we're not likely to use it much. Also, please note, AAFrequentFlyer, that I am not talking about a rental. The $49 for the Mobal phone would be a purchase -- we would then own the phone forever and only pay for whatever calls we make on it.

If I could buy a GSM phone with airtime for not much more than $100, I'd consider it. But I haven't found any way to do that. For this trip at least, I'd rather only spend $49, and possibly a few dollars more on calls, but probably not even $20 worth.

xyz123, I have read a lot of your posts on cell phones and found them very helpful, so I do appreciate your information. It's just that I still don't see any way to do what you recommend for much less than $150, which is definitely more than I want to spend.

To nonnafelice: I also read up on all advises from xyz in this forum. He knows what he talks about. You said that both of you have cell phone each. Can you get one of them unlocked and use it in Europe assuming that they are not single band? I unlocked mine and it is now in Bangkok with a local sim. I loaned it to my friend who will be there for a month. My plan is like what AAFF said. It is for traveling in other countries. BTW, I had to get another cellular for use in USA. The cost was $105. The sim card from the first phone was tranferred to the new one. The first phone was free when I signed up with T-Mobile.

Re: " You said that both of you have cell phone each. Can you get one of them unlocked and use it in Europe assuming that they are not single band?"

No, neither of our phones is GSM, and we don't want to change our cell service. So the only way we could get a phone that would work in Europe is to buy a new one, and as I said, I don't see any way to get started with a new GSM phone / SIM card for much less than $150.

If anyone has a specific suggesion for how to do this for $100 or less, I'd like to know about it. Otherwise, I guess no one here has had experience with the Mobal plan, so if we do end up using it, I'll report back.

I looked at their web site and they are charging $49 for the Nokia 3310 which is a good price. It is a solid dual band phone that will not work in North America but as you said you're satisfied with your current mobile carrier.

Their calling card prices are pretty stiff somewhat more expensive it sthan T mobile world class rates which charges 99 cents US/minute both to make and receive calls in Western Europe.

Having said that, it seems to me you can have the best of all worlds. Buy the package and have the Mobal SIM as a back up and still buy a local prepaid SIM. You, IMHO, will do much better as you will be in one country for a while.

It is not said on the web site whether the $49 phone is unlocked which is something you can check with them and let us know.

It's not the worst deal in the world, that's for sure.

Good luck and have a good trip.

I'm also looking at getting a cell phone for travel to Germany Austria and France in about 3 weeks.

I have US Nextel service and have activated their Worlwide service on my account.

My current plan is to buy a 900/1800 GSM phone and either use my Nextel SIM ($1.29/minute incomming and outgoing as this will allow family to call my US number without incurring long distance) or to purchase a pre-paid SIM in Europe if there are good deals.

This E-bay "Store" has good prices on unloced GSM phones. http://stores.ebay.com/wirelessrush_...lessrushQQtZkm

They have a Panasonic A100 (900/1800/1900 MHz) for $88.88 and a Motorola V525 (850/900/1800/1900 MHz) for $189.89. Both new.

hmmmm - what did we do before cell phones....

Hmmm..

What did we do before jet airplanes?

What did we do before credit cards?

What did we do before television?

What did we do before automobiles?

What did we do before the steam engine?

Technology marches on and life gets better for all!

XYZ123 - So, if I go to Paris, then to a phone store and buy myself an unlocked GSM phone, I'm assuming the manual will be in French, and that when I turn the phone on all the menus will be in French. How exactly can you "set the menu to English"? Is this done via the SIM card?

If I then go to say, Russia, I would need another SIM card? Would that be in Russian? Can that be set to English?

Depends on the country and the company..

Example on my Dutch Vodafone NL SIM, you can have all the voice prompts set to English. The sales person did it for me when I bought the SIM pack.

On my French Orange FR, some of the voice prompts but not all can be set to English by dialing a certain code.

The manual, if you buy the phone in France say may or may not be bilingual. The instruction pack that came with the SIM card was indeed only in French.

Somehow I don't think German SIM cards allow English prompts.

Certainly the sales person can give you a quick tour of the phone's features.

The phone's internal menus can always be set to English...Again the salesperson will be able to do this for you.

BTW I have never had this problem with the SIM cards I have purchased in the UK.

<b>djkbooks</b>,

This should answer any of your questions:

<b>http://telestial.com/instructions.htm</b>

Thank you, thank you, thank you xyz123 and AAFrequentFlyer.

And, may I take this opportunity to acknowledge your many, many magnificent contributions to this Forum!

After discovering this service as a result of nonnafelice's question, we have decided to try it. There's no question that the per call charges are high, but we won't require many calls, and the simplicity seems to make up for it. We bought the $50 Nokia, and feel it should be more than adequate for now.

I haven't left the country yet, but I thought I would report that so far their customer service has been excellent. We received the phone promptly, with good, detailed instructions on how to get started. When I emailed them with one question, I got a very helpful personal phone call in response.

One other thing I have learned. Callers trying to reach you do indeed have to dial an international number, but they can get a special rate through the phone company which brings down the cost to them dramatically. In our case, a rate plan which costs $2.95 per month brings the cost of calls down from $1.50 per minute to $0.07-- the monthly fee is paid for in 3 minutes of calls. This would also be meainingful if you plan to buy your SIM card locally-- it saves anyone calling you a lot of money.

I'll report again after putting them to the real test!

Has anyone used
Cells4rent?
the prices seem low
$15/month to rent with low min rates.
Almost sounds too good
cells4rent.com

What do you consider low calling rates? And check out a thread on MBNA where a person found what should have been a small bill from a rental phone company turned into a $700 horror...for a month when you would probably be using the phone, you're far better off picking up a cheap dual or tri band GSM phone and using prepaid plans, this is very close to being a no brainer.

And please don't let anybody tell you it's a hassle with prepaid plans. It's as close to a piece of cake as there is.

Here's my follow-up report on Mobal. The phone worked perfectly everywhere we were. Because the company is based in Britain, the service searches for a local provider when you turn the phone on. In our case TIM was always easily accessible. For our very limited usage I think this was a fine solution. We did feel some pressure to keep our calls short (because of the rates), but I expect our total bill to be no more than about $50 (plus the initial purchase of the phone). Voicemail is available, but we did not need it.

This is not to say that in the long run pre-paid doesn't make more sense. But for the occasional traveler (and light phone user) who wants a simple solution Mobal meets a need.

Thanks for the follow-up, rsb. We did buy a Mobal phone but don't leave for a few weeks, so I'm glad to know you had success with yours.

Do remember Mobal is a purchase but the phone is probably locked. If it is a Nokia, it can easily be unlocked and then you can use any SIM card you want in future trips to Europe.

Okay, I am a little slow here. Could you explain this to me? I leave for Italy in a week. I want to have a cell phone to use there but don?t want to spend a lot of money on it (less than $100 total). I might want to use this phone in the future for trips to France or UK. So, I?
(1) buy an unlocked GSM phone. on amazon how much should this cost? What should this cost if I buy the phone in a store in Italy?
(2) Buy a SIM card ? this activates the phone?
(3) Buy some prepaid minutes some how? How does this work? Do they expire or can I use them in the spring when I go back to Europe?
(4) Are there any continuing monthly fees? can i put the phone away after my trip and then use it again in 6 mos.?

I was really hoping to buy something like the disposable ?Go? phones that you can buy from AT&amp;T here. I think for those you just buy a set number of minutes that comes with a cheap phone and when you use the minutes up, you toss the phone.

Sorry for my technological ignorance. I only want to spend about $100 total on this including phone, minutes, activation, delivery (if any) etc. Is that unreasonable. I don?t think I?ll use the phone too much. Thanks!!!

Go back to the first message in this thread and follow the link from there. That article gives a good rundown on the Mobal phone, as well an excellent overview of various cell phone options. (Thanks to xyz123, who first alerted me to that site.)

If you don't already have a phone that will work in Europe (most Americans don't), AND you don't expect to be making or receiving many calls, the Mobal is the cheapest option I found.

Since you're leaving in a week, if you decide to go for the Mobal, order it right away, as it takes a few days to arrive. (We got ours in 2 days.)

Thanks. The website was helpful. I have an additional question. If you buy a GSM phone in the US that comes with a SIM card, are you forever stuck with that SIM card or can you take it out and put in a different card that you buy in the European country that you are traveling in?
I see that The Mobal website lists GSM phones for purchase starting at $49 (free shipping). They include a SIM card with a UK phone number. This $49 seems like a good deal but I don't want to be stuck with a UK phone number since I&quot;m traveling in Italy and then have to pay long distance charges for all my intra-Italy calls.

Ideally, I'd like to buy a phone in the US (so I don't have to bother in Italy) that I can use on this trip to Italy and then on other trips elsewhere in Europe. The posts above make sense when they say that it is cheapest to buy prepaid minutes. So now I'm trying to get a low priced phone with changeable SIM cards.

Their cheapest phone I believe is a Nokia 3310 a solid dual band phone. The phone is probably locked which means you cannot simply substitute a SIM card from any other carrier. Carriers resort to this questionable technique to prevent you from doing just that...it is not the way the phone leaves the factory but since they are subsidizing the purchase of the phone, they don't want you going out and saving money from their outrageous roaming rates.

That's the bad news.

But here's the good news...

Nokia phones are easy to unlock. No the carrier probably will not do it for you. But the calculator for determining unlocking codes has been cracked and is readilly available for free on the web. You might try a web site www.unlock.co.uk for lots of tips for acquiring this calculator and other tips about unlocking Nokia phones. You basically need to know the phone's serial number (called the IMEI number) which is available with a certain code which the web site lists and inserting the code of the locking company (in this case Mobal)...and voila you instantly get the unlocking code for FREE.

Or there are other sites which ask you to furnish the serial number and the name of the locking company and they provide the unlocking code for FREE. Other sites can charge as much as $10 to $15 to furnish unlocking codes.

While most and I'll use the term advisedly &quot;legitemate&quot; mobile phone stores will not furnish unlocking codes, there are many mobile phone stores and kiosks in European cities that do or they use a cable to unlock the phone which is also safe. I know walking down Oxford Street in London, I see store after store offering to unlock mobile phones for prices that range from &pound;8 to &pound;15. Again, Nokia phones are easy, I've unlocked many of them for me and my friends....other brands are a little more difficult as the calculator codes have not yet been cracked (of course it is only a matter of time) and require cables and software...

But don't let anybody tell you or suggest to you that you are doing something either legally or morally wrong. The ones who are doing something morally wrong are the companies that sell you a phone and deliberately disable one of the most important advantages of GSM i.e. the ability to use a SIM card of your choice.

It is a piece of cake and believe me well worth doing as Mobal prices are outrageously high.

Thank you for the response and the tips on unlocking the phones. I prefer to just buy a GSM unlocked phone since I have limited time and technological ability! The cheapest unlocked phones on ebay look to be about $100. Do you think I'm better off buying one of those or trying to find a GSM unlocked phone when I get to Italy? Is it common for cell phone stores in Europe (Venice specifically) to cell unlocked phones. I am happy to go to a phoen store when i get there (and having the phone isn't a dire emergency anyway) but don't want to spend a whole day trying to sort out the phone business. Any other suggestions for online places to buy an inexpensive phone? Thanks again.

xyz123, you are a very patient person, explaining the same things over and over. Your place in heaven is assured ;-)

Re from xyz123:
&quot; You might try a web site www.unlock.co.uk for lots of tips for acquiring this calculator and other tips about unlocking Nokia phones.&quot;

I was curious about this, even though I didn't plan to try to unlock my phone right now, as I don't expect to use it enough to justify the cost of a SIM card in Italy. So I went to that site and put in the Nokia model that Mobal sent me (#3410). The list of networks that pops up for unlocking does not include Mobal.

I'm wondering if there is a chance that the phone is actually not locked? The phone comes with a separate Mobal SIM card, which has to be inserted. Its instructions say that to insert it (you can buy the Mobal SIM card separately), you have to start with an unlocked GSM phone. Nothing in the material with the phone tells me whether the $49 phone I bought has been locked in some way to work only with the Mobal card.

But it does say that the Mobal SIM card provides access to over 320 GSM networks in 140 countries. I think it's possible that someone who was traveling to different countries might want the Mobal service for convenience of being able to use any network, and be willing to pay the high per-call cost for that convenience. Maybe Mobal isn't actually a network itself, but rather a &quot;door&quot; into other networks.

Anyway, if anyone knows for sure whether the Nokia phone that Mobal sells is locked, I'd love to know.

You're right about mobal not being listed; but evidently they are teaming up with some British carrier as receiving calls in Britain only is free so that part of the advice goes out the window but the phone can easily be unlocked with a cable as explained on the web site.

The other thing to explain is when it says it can be used on x number of providers that is the way roaming works. You don't roam on your carrier if your carrier does not have service in the country you're roaming in.

Example, T mobile USA allows roaming in France. If you have signed up for international roaming (it's free with T mobile USA after you've been a customer for 3 months BTW), as soon as you step off the plane in Paris and turn your t mobile phone on, provided it is a tri band and includes the frequencies used in France (900 and 1800) the phone will search for a carrier which allows it to register i.e. a carrier with which T mobile USA has a roaming agreement (what your literature is talking about)...in the case of France it could be SFR, it could be Orange FR or it could be the third one whose name escapes me right now (see I don't know everything, only almost everything) it doesn't matter, rates are the same but the phone will not read T Mobile as it does at home but whatever network you are roaming on.

About the only way to tell whether or not a phone is locked is to insert a SIM card of another carrier. If the phone boots up, even if it is unable to register on a network, the phone is unlocked. If the phone is locked, it will not boot up rather you will get an error message of some sort indicating the phone is locked; it doesn't even matter if the phone doesn't have a frequency used in the country you are in contrary to the opinion of others. It doesn't start looking for carriers until after it has booted up.

So if you have a friend with a GSM carrier in the US (assuming you are in the US) say T mobile, Cingular (some models) or AT&amp;T WS (some models), while the Nokia 3410 which is a dual band phone with frequencies 900 and 1800 will not work in the US, if the phone doesn't give you a message saying to insert the proper SIM then it is unlocked. If you get such a message then it is locked.