I am traveling soon to Italy and Croatia with my husband and two 15 y/o children. I need to arrange our phone service. We have Verizon and potentially 4 smartphones. (I don't have any old flip phones). I have started to do the research and have been into the Verizon store, but feel somewhat confused/overwhelmed. I want to have phone service to connect to people in Europe and will text or email to communicate back to the States. I greatly appreciated any help.

Thank you!

Wifi is your friend. There are apps that let you text and make phone calls to anyone on the same app. Facetime for apple products, Viber works really well - I have used it in many countries for calls and texting. Email is easy as that works with wifi, no matter what.

viber.com

To use your phones in Europe - they have to be unlocked and be dual CDMA/GSM enabled. CDMA is the system used in US, GSM is used in europe. Many phones don't have the dual capacity and can't be used even with Verizon's international plans, which for 4 phones could be very expensive.

Do you own the phones, or are they still under contract? If you own them (or one of them) and they are quad band you should be able to get Verizon to unlock them. Then you can either buy a SIM in-country, or switch to T-Mobile, which has good month-to-month plans that work overseas.

No need to get a foreign SIM anymore...Verizon's global plan, readily available wifi, plus the various apps is a better bet.

Verizon's global plan is $25 for 100 MB of data, plus $15 for 100 texts, 100 minutes of international calls and unlimited free incoming texts. You need to sign up before your trip. We have found that's about enough for 7-10 days if you don't watch videos on your phone and try to use wifi for web surfing. Rolls over automatically when you exceed your limit...We find we spend about $100 a month, which is well worth it to keep our own number and not miss important calls and texts.

Use viber and Facetime for calls and whatsapp for texts within Europe (which is what everyone else uses).

Hmm, T-Mobile is charging $50/month plus tax for unlimited low speed data, unlimited texts and 20 cents a minute for calls in 120 non-US countries. I really want the data, make very few calls and if I need to call the US am likely to Skype.

<i>Verizon's global plan is $25 for 100 MB of data, plus $15 for 100 texts, 100 minutes of international calls and unlimited free incoming texts.</i>

Not bad except I blow through 50MB in a day.


I remember in the olden days when people didn't worry about stuff like this and made calls from a land line if an emergency popped up.

If you want data, you should get a local SIM card on at least one phone. 100 mb of data is nothing. I don't know of any international plans or US-based foreign roaming plans that have good rates for data.

Roaming within the EU is very reasonable, especially for talk. All roaming costs were scheduled to disappear this year, but they've backed down on the data part. I think the call roaming costs are still set to go away in July, and the costs are already strictly limited. Since both Croatia and Italy are in the EU, you could just get a SIm card in the first country you arrive in, and use it in both countries, at least for phone calls. For data, I know that Italy (where I live) has good roaming plans for EU countries, but I don't know what Croatia has to offer.

Which country will you be in first, and how long will you be in each country?

Roaming fees between EU countries have definitely eased up in teh past two years.

Ttt

So I expect the OP is every bit as confused as she was when she posted.

We're going to Greece in a couple of weeks and have 5c Apple Iphones and Verizon service. As we did in France last September, we have gotten the $40 data package with 100 MB of data, 100 texts and 100 minutes of international calls etc. The phone does not need to be unlocked, does not need a SIM card. However, all phones and all plans differ so follow the advice of Verizon (you can do it over the phone) for your particular phones and carrier.

I'm beginning to feel like a shill for TMobile! My daughter is in Spain, using a TMobile iPhone 4s. Free data, free texting, twenty cent phone calls anywhere. She visited Croatia several weeks ago, service was pretty good,, but service was not included in Montenegro.
Four lines(Postpaid plan) would be $100 month, get a cheap unlocked quad band phone(Nokia Windows phones work well), cancel the contract (no cancellation fees)sell the phones when you get back. We have been impressed with TMobile service in Europe, better than USA.

Totally agree about T-Mobile. I used it for my trip to Europe last year - eight countries and the only one it didn't work in was Slovenia. (But Croatia is covered.) 100MB of data is nothing.