Rob,

Sounds good, thanks. Look forward to hearing your thoughts.

The CallinEurope phone arrived in the mail yesterday.

It's a slick but basic phone... no bluetooth or camera etc but I prefer simple and easy to use over multifunction complexity.

The sim card was already installed and they emailed me the PIN for added security. Also in the package were:

80 stickers with the phone's number to hand out to family and friends.

3 nice luggage tags with my name, address and cell number

charger and a couple of european
adapters

manual in a dozen languages

rubbery protective cover and
plastic waterproof case

a nylon bag to pack the phone and
peripherals.

The phone also has about a 50% power charge in it so I can program in somephone numbers etc before leaving.

So far I am impressed with the service and what I've received...
can't wait to test it but I'll have to wait until May. ;^(

You will enjoy your phone.
I have both the Mobal and the Roam Simple.
The negative for the Mobal is that it has an Extonian phone number...which means all calls are to/from Estonia!!
The Roam Simple has a France SIM..or any other that you want, as it is an unlocked quad phone. It, too comes with all the many little things..plus all the help you could want.
Enjoy...........

I've been following this thread and others like it regarding cell phones in Europe. My daughter will be studying in France this summer and we want her to have a cell phone (mobile) while there.

I've called Call In Europe as well as Roam Simple. I received some great customer service from Roam Simple. As I understand it the phone will cost $50 and the sim $19. All incoming calls and texts to the phone are free and calls going out from France to the US are $.79 per minute and $.39 per text.

In order to not be billed for the annual renewal fee then I was told to return the sim card and they will credit my account $9.00. If I want to use the phone within the next year then keep the sim and allow for the renewal fee. If the phone won't be used for a couple of years then return the sim and order a new one when we return to Europe.

I think that I will go with this option but I am also researching skype so that I can communicate with my daughter via internet free of charge.

For those who are considering renting through Verizon, DON'T! They were so ridiculously expensive! I could have bought several phones with what I was charged. But that was my fault as I didn't research this option thoroughly enough.

The $0.79/minute to call the USA is still a little too stiff but there are 2 ways around it...

1. Get upon arrival in France a calling card with a local Paris number...that way you pay for a call within France and then dial out with the calling card....

2. Open up an account with enlinea (www.enlinea.com)...they are a callback service...here's the way it works..they give you a US number to call...upon calling that number from the French sim card, you get a busy signal, hang up and within seconds you get a callback and you will be instructed to enter the number you are calling followed by the number sign key (not the send key very important) and the call goes through...currently enlinea charges I believe $0.27/minute to call from the French sim to the USA...the first triggering call is never completed so no charge and the call back is an incoming call in France so no charge)...

Roam simple indeed is simple and a very simple solution bjut they do not, I don't think, give you the benefit of low rates on receiving calls outside France say a weekend in London via Eurostar and calls to other countries than the USA are asininely high ($1.99/minute)...

She might be better served, when she gets to her school, to purchase a local sim card...maybe her school or classmates can make suggestions...or you can check out www.prepaidgsm.net...the $19 (it was $9, now that was a bargain) isn't bad as French sim card have the obnoxeous habit of stealing your credit after a given amojunt of time and they are difficult to top up outside of France but given it's only $19 she can start out with the Roam Simple card, get some local information about a French sim (she will be there a while; for a quick one week or two week trip, roam simple is fine) and act accordingly.

oops too many ... the prepaid gsm forum is at www.prepaidgsm.net


They have also an operators page listing the various French telcom companies and their rates.....

XYZ thank you for the info but I was thinking that another way to get around the $.79 per minute is to have her text me "call me" or call me quickly and tell me to call her and hang up. Then I can call her back. Any calls to her would then be free.

While she is in her dorm, she would use skype and again we would not incur any charges.

The enlinea website you gave would work I'm sure but I'm so technically challenged that the site confused me as did the site for prepaidgsm.

I also have a Roam Simple. I used it in Paris in April and will be taking in for a month in Sept/Oct and for a month in the Spring. Great phone..inexpensive and easy to use..a quad band phone...

flygurl...

CallinEurope is not a call back
service! It's a fully functional cell phone...

I phoned home to Canada from Athens
and the call quality was crystal
clear! Clearer than the much more
expensive cell phone I use at home.

So I don't know where you have been researching but as a user I can tell you you're way off base.

Rob

flygurl has been 'terminated' for advertising.

hello Fodors readers. Very impressed with all the feedback on international cell phones - glad to see all the options and experiences. I recently purchased a cellphone and global World service from www.roamsimple.com and I must say they had excellent service and it was an excellent experience. I travel extensively and this international service was def a wise investment. Great rates and great billing system - they only charge your credit card for any airtime that is used which is soooooooooo much better than the prepaid services I was buying. Thanks for reading

An old resurrected thread!

I continue to use my Roam Simple. I was in France for a month in Sept/Oct and for 12 days in Dec. I will be leaving mid April for another month and it will be along!

Joan

Hi, gracejoan

I will be in Asheville tomorrow and would love to chat with you about this and other things, perhaps. If you wouldn't mind my calling you somewhere between 11:30 - 1:30, e-mail me your number at bcarver1[at]charter[dot]net.

I've followed your adventures here for quite a while and often thought about trying to get in touch with you. I live in Spartanburg, SC and travel to France about once a year, usually with folks from the Asheville area.

Hoping you'll see this,
Betty (semi-retired French teacher)

Last May my wife and I did use our two Roam Simple phone accounts to communicate with each other during almost five weeks in Paris. We had no problems at all. Because the apartment we rented had phone service with no-cost access to the US and throughout France, we did not use our Roam Simple ones for that. We are saving the phones (with the batteries removed) for our next trip, probably to Venice and Florence.

Saw your message, Betty. I have e-mailed you.

I have Mobal, Range Roamer and Roam Simple. First two had were not in France numbers..one was British and the other was Estonia. My Roam Simple is a France number. I used it on my 3 trips to Paris last year. I am leaving on the 14th for a month. Running down to Les Baux for a few days. It will be with me. It is ready to work when I land..just turn it on.

It is very inexpensive to use. The apartments that I rent in Paris all have the free calls to US, so would not need to use cell to call US.

Nice people when contacting them.

Joan

Had great service with Roam Simple new Europe SIM card. Flat rate calling in the EU and best of all - i kept the same number throughout all my travels and my service was postpaid so i didn't have to worry about airtime credit. Did some research of course before I bought this service and it seems the Mobal solution is very expensive - all others are like these callback services which is like another blogger wrote - an Estonia number. Beware of these callback services. The roamsimple Europe SIM card was UK based and it worked flawless...

I looked at both Roam Simple and Call in Europe and chose the latter because it cost a bit less overall. I took the phone to Paris this March; everything worked fine *except* the Voicemail Retrieval code did not work. Voicemail did pick up my unanswered calls, but I could not pick up the messages. I called their Support number from Paris but they couldn't fix it.

Since returning to the US I have been exchanging emails with them for weeks to no avail. They keep saying they're waiting to hear from SFR (the carrier).

Quick question for those who have used Roam Simple. Can you designate the specific country you'd like a number? For example, can you get a phone number for Spain or Italy or the Netherlands? Or do you just get a "European" sim card and a random European phone number. Thanks in advance.

Roam simple has a variety of different sim cards for individual country...they have one for the UK (totally unnecessary, UK sim cards are dirt cheap or even free), France, Belgium, Italy at least (I know not Holland and don't think Spain but I could be wrong)....also India, Australia....check their web site.

Their country specific cards are good as you get the free reception of calls within that country but roaming rates outside the country of the sim card are putrid to put it mildly.....e kit passport available for $20 on ebay with $10 credit seems a better bet as you get most of the Western European countries for free reception and don't pay all that much for calls to outside the eu.

At least that's today's story. Tomorrow's story might be completely different/

xyz123, thanks for the info. I have friends coming to France but who also plan to do some traveling around the continent. Roam Simple offers something called a European Sim but I wasn't sure what sort of phone number they'd end up with. No one is likely to want to return their calls if it's an exotic number in eastern europe or perhaps even if it's a UK number. Roam simple seems to be a better deal when one stays put in a single country -- as you noted.