Let's say I get a quadband GSM cell phone in the USA from Tmobile (however, this plan does NOT allow me to roam internationally except for Canada and Mexico). I then get Tmobile to unlock it. I buy a sim card when I get to Ireland and get my Ireland phone #.

What do I pay to call back to the USA and let people know my new Ireland number? Is there an extra charge for calling overseas, or does it just use the same amount of minutes as calling within Ireland?

Once you take the T Mobile sim card out of the phone, T mobile has absolutely no connection with the phone. It is now an Irish phone and you will pay whatever the Irish carrier charges to call the USA which might be expensive or might not be; you'll have to check the policies and tariffs of the Irish carrier.

You can of course text message your friends to let them know your number or use e mail as well as making a quick call to them or you can use a forwarding service such as kall8 or voicestick where you can set a local number or toll free number to forward to whatever number you set.

thanks! is there a way to find that info out online? i'm trying to decide if it's better to do a prepaid tmobile plan or a mobal.com phone. overall the phone price is about comparable, so it's going to come down to the rates while calling within ireland to make my decision.

www.prepaidgsm.net has a list of national operators..click on European union and then on Ireland and it will list the Irish operators. You will see a general overview of their rates and their home web pages which might have some updated information.

In general, it is almost always better to use a local prepaid sim card then mobal...mobal charges obscenely high rates and is really good only for emergencies. The beauty of the local prepaid sim is you don't pay a cent to receive calls...with mobal you pay more than $1/minute to receive calls!

Ain't even close.

I think you should find out what conditions you have to meet before T Mobile agrees to unlock your phone. You may be better off buying an unlocked quadband phone on ebay or from a vendor like tigerdirect.com or motorola,
http://www.store.motorola.com/mot/en...irect/motorola
You might also what to think about getting an international sim. These are discussed on
http://www.prepaidgsm.net/en/international.html
Calling is more expensive with an international sim than an Irish sim, but you'll have a number you can use in subsequent trips to Europe, and you'll have it before you leave.

I bought an unlocked quadband Motorola on ebay for $33 and have been using it with an SFR SIM card in France for over a month. Works great.

I used a unlocked Motorola V180 in Ireland last summer. It worked great! I bought it off e-bay. I bought a sim card at Vodaphone in the Dublin airport. They were very helpful, they even loaded the sim card in for me and made sure it worked. I didn't want to run out of minutes so twice in my 2 week trip I popped into a Vodaphone store and they checked my remaining minutes for me. I wasn't sure how to check the minutes and they were very nice about helping me. I also used a costco calling card to do all my long distance calling back to the states with my phone. That way the calls to the US only used local minutes. The only trouble I had with the phone, was not the phone it was the operator (ME). In those cases I just found a teenager and they showed me what I was doing wrong. The Irish people are so very nice and everyone we met was more than happy to help. That phone was one of the best tips I have gotten off of Fodor's. It was great to be able to call ahead to the B&B's we were staying at and know if we had some kind of car mishap we had a phone.

My daughter just got home from a trip to France and Spain, I ordered a sim card from ekit that had a UK phone number. It came with 45 minutes of toll free minutes for anyone in the US calling the phone. It also worked great. I don't know if it was a good deal price wise, but it worked great.

The three suppliers in Ireland are as follows

www.vodafone.ie
www.o2.ie
www.meteor.ie

look up charges on their websites or mail them to find out.