Thank you to all of you who have taken so much time to research this cell phone topic. I feel guilty asking questions one more time. We are a party of four who will be biking in Ireland. We've decided that having two cell phones there would be a wise move. If I understand this correctly, I could buy Nokia phones from Mobal for around $49, buy a SIM card from a source like Vodaphone, O2, etc. I'm thinking that if my purpose is to instantly call each other, then the RIIING service is not what we want.

If one if looking at the competing SIMs for Ireland, keeping in mind we will mainly be calling each other for two weeks within Ireland, which SIM deal do you think is the best? Is there one which is easiest to top off at a SPAR as we travel, etc?

I looked at a Hop-On TriBand phone (1806, I think), too, by the way. Its size, etc, appeal to my use while we are biking. Any experience?

Again, thanks.

I find it difficult to believe that Mobal will sell you a GSM phone for $49 that is not LOCKED into their own SIM card. Research on their website shows rates for "local" calls at $1.25 per minute -- INCOMING and OUTGING.
So, with their service, it will cost you $2.50 per minute! Pretty pricey.
I have a Vodaphone Sim, that costs me 30 - 60 euro cents per minute for OUTGOING calls and NOTHING for INCOMING.
O2 is pretty similar. The other major player in Ireland is Meteor, but their coverage has been called "spotty".
If you go to the company websites, they offer deals as well, onphones -- vodaphone has a 69 euro Sagem camera phone with pay as you go, but I'm sure it is LOCKED to Vodaphone, as well.

The critical key is that the phone needs to be UNLOCKED if you wish to pick and choose SIMS.

Most people who have recently bought from Mobal HAVE been able to unlock their phones; a couple of posters reported that their phone was already unlocked (in spite of what the website says).
http://www.fodors.com/forums/threads...p;tid=34587164

But luckily for people who don't wish to have companies try to sabotage gsm phones and try to defeat what gsm is supposed to do, the phones Mobal sells are Nokia phones and the unlocking calculator for nokia phones is freely available on the web and also there are several web sites that provide the unlocking code for free so they can lock the phone all they want, it is very easy to unlock.

The Noka 3100 tri band they are selling for $99 is unlocked...the cheaper 3410, a dual band, they are selling for $49 is reported to be locked.

But as noted it is free to unlock the phone and $49 is a good deal as long as you are smart enough to toss away the sim card that comes with it which is outrageously priced, imagine $1.25 to receive a call in Europe, downright highway robbery.

And, if you decide to go the Mobal route,

http://www.mobalrental.com/gsm/hands...im&cc=3410

Then you can get the $49 phone for only $29.

Bob

Thanks all, again, for taking the time to reply. Bob (Italian_Chauffeur), I had indeed been reading all the web notices here, so I already assumed that I would unlock the "locked" Mobal. Thanks for the $29 tip, though, because I had erroneously assumed that deal had expired!

So as far as everyone is concerned, then, I'm fine with Vodaphone or O2. Will not touch Meteor if coverage is spotty.

I bought a Sony Ericson unlocked tri-band on line for about $100 about a year and a half ago, then bought an Irish vodaphone Sim for about $50 that included 15 euro of call credit. I could have bought the same Sim in Ireland for about $20, but I thought it was worth it to have the Irish phone number BEFORE we left the states, left with everyone that might need to contact us in case of any emergencies. Right before we left to return home, I 'TOPPED UP' with a 10 euro credit that keeps the number active for one year. I also just added another 25 euro ONLINE, so we can hit the ground running, with about 45 euro worth of calling time.
Was in a lot of rural, mountainous areas last year, and never once, could I not find a signal. I'm told O2 is about the same, but Meteor has (or, at least HAD some 'dead spots'.
Almost any gas station, news stand or grocery will sell 'top up' cards, they seem to be EVERYWHERE.
Vodaphone offers a variety of plans for calling groups etc. that have below standard rates. Check out their IRISH website:

www.vodaphone.ie

My impression of Vodafone and O2 is that Vodafone is better. The difference is not significant in much of the country but if you are in remote areas Vodafone is much more likely to produce a signal in my experience.

There is a vodafone store right in the arrivals hall of Dublin airport...my companion bought a vodafone.ie sim pack for €9,99 with €5 of calling credit and the clerk registered the card for us giving us an additional €5 of credit....he spent hardly any of it as he had set up a callback world account before leaving and simply switched via the web the callback account to the irish sim...he also had a kall8 account and used the web (right at the airport) to set the ring to number to the irish sim.

Nice and easily done.

I looked up the Vodafone locations. There are no longer any at Shannon Airport. Has anyone used the one at Ennis? There's a Cellphone Warehouse, or something like that on O'Connell that's listed in the Ennis directory, but I have not found an Ennis listing for the store Vodafone lists in THEIR directory.

There was still a little grocery/convenience store in the Arrivals Hall that PROBABLY sells Top- p cards and MAY sell SIMS, as well.

Thanks bunches!

I used Vodafone's Ennis store last summer. It's on the left hand side as you enter the city centre from the north by the friary. The cost of sim pack is now 29 euro including 15 euro call credit. You can get further free credit by registering (you need an Irish address).

Thanks, Alec. I was wondering how the packs I was seeing on the internet could charge $50--now I know!

Could you tell me what's involved in registering? If we're just visiting, how does this work?

Can't give you any specific advice on Ireland phones but I can give you a suggestion about waiting till you get to Europe for buying your SIM card - likely much cheaper than you can get it before you go.

As soon as we get the SIM card, I send a text message (very cheap) to my daughter's cell phone with the European #. She then e-mails the European # to the other daughter, the pet sitter, and anyone else I've asked her to advise; I send her a list of e-mail addresses before I leave. We recently did this on a trip to Greece because we didn't want to pay 50 bucks for a card here. Got one for 6 Euros at a kiosk on the street with 8 Euros of time on it. (Vodafone is trying to get a bigger share of the Greek market.) We normally communicate anything not particularly urgent by text messaging my daughter's cell.

If anyone is going to Greece, check on Cosmote, though. In much of Europe (where we've been, anyway), Vodafone has some of the best coverage for the best prices. So we got the Vodafone card without pricing anything else - or remembering something I read in Lonely Planet about coverage. It was fine in cities, but in rural areas my husband had Cosmote roaming on his AT&T phone when I had no Vodafone service, not even roaming on another carrier. Not a big deal since, if we had gotten lost for days in the mountains of Crete as I thought might be happening one time, we could have made an [expensive] call on his phone. (No one but immediate family has his # because he only gives out his office # and has his cell calls forwarded from that phone. He takes the forwarding off when we leave the country, so he doesn't have much danger of getting calls in Europe.) But if you only have one phone and are planning to be in the boondocks, Cosmote has better coverage. In fact, there was coverage on most of the trip by catamaran from Santorini to Crete, to my amazement.