jkbritt

Lilake. When we got to France, I walked down the street, close to where I was staying and found a cell phone store. Gentleman did no speak English so I went down 3 stores to the next on, and they did. Bought orange chip. Paid 20E for chip and 60 minutes of talk time. They had a promotion on. Chip was in French, which I did not know at the time of purchase, which I do not read, so when got confirmation message in an hour, could not read it. So found 4 girls on th street who were just hanging around, asked them if they could change it to English, they said yes, and in 30 seconds I had English on my phone, and they had a story to tell mom. Can add minutes at any orange store if need more.

jkbritt

Lilake -I was using an unlocked tri-ban phone bought from ebay. Worked fine.

mrcamp

Lilaki, you can test if it's unlocked even in NA. Just put any sim card besides CIE sim card (or the carrier they use's sim card) in it. If it's locked it will ask for a subsidy code or so. See if you can get a hold of AT&T or Tmobile sim cards. That phone is about as basic as they come. So, unless it's dirt cheap to unlock it, my suggestion would be to get an unlocked phone outright.

elsiejune

Thanks for taking the time to educate me, justretired. EJ

lilaki

hi mrcamp,

thanks for letting me know about the SIM swapping ... i'll have to charge the phone first, get another SIM card and then test it out!

Seamus

Not sure where you are located, but all you have to do is Google "cell phone unlock (your city)" and you will likely find loads of options. Many if not most small cell phone repair shops can do this for a small fee.

Who is your US carrier and is your phone at least tri-band? If so, and you don't use the $60/year worth of service required to keep your CIE line active, it may be simpler all around to just use your US phone in France. No worry about unlocking, changing SIM. You would be charged for incoming calls so be sure that you let people know you will be out of the country and unavailable, or just ignore their incoming calls.

kybourbon

>>>Just put any sim card besides CIE sim card (or the carrier they use's sim card) in it. If it's locked it will ask for a<<<

If you don't want to buy a sim to test your phone, you can probably borrow one from a friend's phone.

CIE has no interest in helping you unlock as they want you to continue service with them.

lilaki

hi seamus,

i'm a canadian and on a CDMA network. bringing my phone to europe would be pointless. hence, the CIE solution that we used last year.

frenchwow

when we bought our US t-mobile 4 band phone last week, they told us we can call the day before we leave to activate Global for $4.00 a month. will it work?

Seamus

Yes, frenchwow, it will work. T-Mobile does not use a CDMA network so you will be fine in Europe.

lilaki - got it, understand. Good luck and let us know how it works out for you.