prepaid cell phone
 

Somewhere heard that one can buy a "disposable" prepaid cell phone in parts of Europe for around $US 50. Anyone have any info on this? Are these phones available in Netherlands or the UK?

Disposable cell phones seem to be kind of an "urban legend". There are even web sites of companies that claim to manufacture them, but they never seem to make it to market.

Idon'tknow about $50, but I have posted several threads about great success with a prepaid phone I bought for $85 last fall -- then sold it to another traveler for $55 -- it came with $25 of pre-paid time,and I only used about half of that.<BR><BR>Best wishes,<BR><BR>Rex<BR>

topping, for Jerry<BR>

Jerry,<BR><BR>Don't know about $50, but last year my son bought a prepay for &pound;50 sterling. Have to check if it works around the rest of Europe. The costs have now gone up and you can expect to pay more like &pound;85. It's easy to pick up a sim card with a little credit from some phone stores - cost &pound;10, so a second hand phone might be an idea. I know if travelling to the states I can rent one, havn't heard about this in UK though.<BR><BR>Good luck<BR><BR>~~ Nige ~~

As someone mentioned on this site, you can use Nextel in Europe. I checked this out and since I already use the service, don't have to set anything new up, just have to trade my phone for an i2000. I can continue using it at home and on my travels.

For what it's worth:<BR><BR>I purchased a tri-band phone through Nextel earlier this year. Since my brother is now living in London and I have "un nouvelle ami" who lives in Paris, I figured it might be worth a try since I will likely be traveling to Europe at least once or twice a year.<BR><BR>I just returned from a trip to the UK and the phone worked without a hitch. All I had to do was turn it on when I arrived in London and it connected with the British Telecom network. <BR><BR>For outgoing calls to my brother, I dialed the phone numbers as a local call. For incoming calls from my brother, he had to dial as if I were still in the US. If someone back in the US needed to reach me, they would dial my cell phone as a local call (no opportunity to test this, however).<BR><BR>The cost for calls made/received while I was in the UK were $1.29 per minute. No great deal, cost-wise, but it did give me greater freedom to do things according to my schedule and not have to hang out near my hotel room phone waiting for my brother to wake up and decide where and when we should meet.

Voicestream also uses tri-band sim card phones for the States as well as Europe.If you already use the Voicestream sytem here, I would look into it.

topping<BR>

Speaking of phones, just got back from London and Paris, and I have never seen such a proliferation of cell phones. Seems like everybody and their dog had one and was talking on it. You could tell when we had exited the chunnel on Eurostar because the cell phones started ringing.

Speaking of phones, just got back from London and Paris, and I have never seen such a proliferation of cell phones. Seems like everybody and their dog had one and was talking on it. You could tell when we had exited the chunnel on Eurostar because the cell phones started ringing.