US Cell phone usage in Norway, Denmark, Belgium and Luxembourg
 

My wife and I will soon spend several weeks in Europe, visiting the countries of Norway, Denmark, Belgium and Luxembourg. I am trying to find a quality and yet, economical method to maintain contact with my teenagers back in the US. I have planned my hotels and such to ensure I have web access for video chat on late evenings but figure I still need for them to reach me by phone or text.

I have read over many of the other forum posts regarding cell phones, but many of them seem to address situations where folks are visiting one country and thus, buying a Simm for that country. I am looking for a multi-country option. I have a quad band phone thru AT&T that I will seek to have unlocked. On our normal cell plan, we have free long distance included in the monthly plan and thus, use that for our long distance instead of our house phone. I know that I can get a world plan from ATT but it is not cheap for the volume of calls I suspect we might have with our kids on the trip.

I have read your comments regarding Call in Europe and some other options but I was also intrigued when in one post, XYZ mentioned Localphone where I would be provided with a US phone number. I tried to find out more about this on their website but other than a fluff comment, did not really lay out the details. Has anyone actually used this service? It is my hope that if everything can pass thru the assigned USA number then my kids remaining in the US, can still use the free long distance on their cell phones to call me at no cost (on their end) in Europe.

I would appreciate your thoughts and suggestions.

Thank you in advance.

Okay...I would agree it is not a great idea to get separate sim cards for each of the countries. Here is a solution.

1. Get a cheap unlocked quad band gsm phone...

2. Go to ebay and look up US simple ekit card. Hereis the link http://tinyurl.com/2ccya5x

3. The card costs $9 with $3 shipping. You get both a USA number and a UK (not Britain but UK nonetheless) number. The card comes with $10 credit.

4. Calls made to them via the USA number (you don't need localphone, that would be something for a single country local sim where you might want to tie it in to a USA (or Canadian) number) cost 19¢/minute (unfortunately rounded up to the next highest minute)...calls made to them on the UK number are free to receive throughout the countries indicated here but the caller in the USA pays somewhat more. The choice is truly up to the caller.

5. It is PAYG not postpaid. As I have said, I always have a problem with postpaid as if you should lose the sim and somebody finds it, you are reponsible for all calls made on it. But that's a matter of preference.

6. Calls back to the USA are a tad more expensive than I might like (40¢/minute with a 35¢ per call set up fee again rounded up to the next highest minute) but nothing stops you from making the call and asking the caller to call them right back! Calls within Europe cost the same but unfortunately calls to European mobile numbers are charged 84¢/minute with the 35¢ set up fee, ouch).

7. The card has gotten good ratings from people who have used it (go to www.prepaidgsm.net and check out the forum there).

8. There are other solutions but at this point in time (and do understand things can change tomorrow), this is a very simple solution.

There are prepaid SIMs available in Europe which allow you to roam to different countries - I know you said you didn't want one of these but we found Lebara Mobile to be very cost-effective. We took it from Germany to the Netherlands, but you can take it other places as well. And if you want to call the US, the rate from Germany was 4c/min. I am sure there are other options, but we thought this was a good one. All you would need is an unlocked phone that can function on a GSM network.

Lavandula

For the most part, any eu local sim card allows roaming in other countries in the eu and most include Norway and Switzerland despite the fact the last two are not in the eu; they're not bad deals but...

1. They only allow free reception of calls in their country of origina...the one referred to above does allow free reception of calls in Germany but you pay a surcharge (I think it's something like €0,15/minute although local VAT increases this a tad. Scoring one for the roaming rates in the eu as operators are required to use per second billing after the first 30 seconds! Rates are pretty good actually (and the eu vows to bring them down further hoping for all calls to be received free in the not too distant future)...calls within the eu are €0,39/minute, again relatively inexpensive and has e-kit beat there. HOWEVER

2. On the down side compared to e-kit, calls outside the eu say to North America can be more expensive than e-kit from some countries and are almost prohibitivelyh expensive when used outside the local area. As an example, using a British sim you can call the USA for as little as 3p/minute (or 4p/minute on Lebarra UK) but once you leave the UK, calls to the USA are more than £1/minute. E-kit wins there (although their calls to the USA are not all that cheap, just cheaper than roaming calls with a European local sim.

3. You don't get the USA number for others to call, they have to pay for a call to a European mobile which always carries a surcharge. On the other hand, you can use local phone (www.localphone.com) so they have a domestic number to call to reach you and you pay varyng amounts depending on your carrier according to localphone tariffs.

It is a solution for receiving calls (hopefully eu roaming rates will continue to come down to what they should have been all along i.e. 0 (Ms. Redding, the eu person in charge of this likens this approach to what happened in the USA and although many here don't remember, you didn't always get free "roaming" (outside your local area with cell phones..originally roaming rates were very high but since about 1995, you almost always get free roaming in the USA with just about every carrier!) so...as another solution, you can get a local sim in your first country and either use it throughout the rest of the trip using localphone to get a USA number but calls outside th eeu will be just as expensive as AT&T and T Mobile international roaming but receiving will be relatively inexpensive on your part.

Hope that helps you make a decision (of curse, you can always get local sims in every country yoou visit, generally they're not too expensive and use local phone where you can set the number it rings to via the web).

Then there skype and others.....I was just trying to keep it simple.

The least expensive solution is to take your own phone, assuming it is suitable for Europe, and tell your kids they can text you in an emergency - otherwise to wait for the online contact. Give them the names, phone numbers and dates of the hotels where you will be staying too, just so they have another line of contact if they need it.
Turn your phone off and only switch it in on at set times, to avoid friends/family/work phoning you and make sure your voicemail is turned off.
The chances are you will not need to phone home, and they won't need to phone you. If an emergency arises then the price of phone calls will be the least of your worries. You can always buy a payg phone then if you need to - they don't cost much.

Thank you everyone. I purchased the Ekit card off of ebay for $9 and will get a $10 call credit. Shipping was $3. Before I made the purchase, I read thru a long forum string on the site XYZ recommended. I was impressed that the CEO of Ekit had taken time to personally respond to some of the posters in here. All the folks had been impressed with the customer service as well.

http://www.prepaidgsm.net/forum/inte...s-uk-sims.html

You made the right choice. I have that same ekit sim as well and it has worked well for me.

Be advised that with Ekit, I had no cell phone service for the two days I was in Balestrand, Norway. Ekit support concluded that there must be no GSM network in that area. The phone worked fine in both Oslo and Bergen, Norway.