Cell Phone in Europe???

[Mac-A-Matic]

Heading to London, Amsterdam and France next month and while I like my iPhone, I don't like the roaming fees.

Can anyone give me insight on the best way to obtain a cell phone while traveling through Europe? I saw that Virgin Mobile has a Pay As You Go option in the UK. If I go that route, can I simply purchase another SIM to use in France?

Or is there a better way?

Thanks!

[rgG]

My daughter purchased a cheap pre-paid cell phone in Spain about a week ago. I think it cost about 13 euros and came with maybe 10 minutes of time. She bought an additional 20 euros worth of pre-paid minutes for the phone. We had T-Mobile to unlock her BlackBerry before she left, so she just popped out the sim card from the pre-paid phone and put it in her BB, and it works fine. They would not sell her just the sim card, why I don't know, but now she has a back-up phone in case something happens to the BB.

[jawg]

Check out: http://www.brightroam.com
Their international SIM works all over Europe at decent rates. It is a better deal than getting country specific SIMs from them.
You can get a phone from them, or any unlocked quad band GSM phone from an ebay seller will work with their SIM.
I have used them and have had good results in the UK, France, Germany, Switzerland, and Austria.

[nwyaker]

Checked out brightroam. Rates are way more than I paid for local SIM in Portugal, Slovakia, etc. I called USA from Bratislava for US $ .33 / min. - 1.99 at brightroam.

[Winston]

Mac-A-Matic wrote:
Heading to London, Amsterdam and France next month and while I like my iPhone, I don't like the roaming fees.

Can anyone give me insight on the best way to obtain a cell phone while traveling through Europe? I saw that Virgin Mobile has a Pay As You Go option in the UK. If I go that route, can I simply purchase another SIM to use in France?

Or is there a better way?

Thanks!

A Virgin Mobile phone you get in the UK will be locked to Virgin Mobile and won't work with a SIM from the other countries. The Virgin Mobile UK service may or may not work in other countries - don't know where that stands - but it will be more expensive than using a local SIM. You may be able to do reloads online from The Netherlands and France if you decide to go that route. Check Virgin Mobile UK's site.

You should be able to get local SIM cards in each country fairly inexpensively.

Another company, Telestial, has a "Passport" multicountry SIM you may want to look into:
http://www.telestial.com/view_product.ph...=MSIM-PP02

Note that incoming calls in Europe are normally free, but people calling you pay more. There are some callback services like Callback World which can reduce the cost of making calls back to the US. You dial an access number, let it ring and hang up. The system then calls you back and gives you access to place a call.
http://www.callbackworld.com/



Good luck.

- Winston

[Fritz]

How would this work in South America?
I assume I'd have to JB my iPho 3G? (unless I go Droid T-Mo before then)

I'd thought that buying local SIMs is there better choice.
Or is the Telestial just a matter of convenience?

[Winston]

I don't have direct experience with South America, but I think the multi-country SIMs like the one Telestial offers work in South America. (Telestial should have a list with rates.) I have not checked on cards like this since last year, so it might be worth doing some research to see if there are more competitive alternatives.

Having a SIM card you can use in more than one country is mainly a convenience. In most cases getting a local SIM is the least expensive. The Telestial offering might end up being cheaper if you are visiting several countries and would end up with unused minutes on several local SIM cards if you went that route. You also get a number you can give out ahead of time. Note that several places sell foreign country SIMs in the US, but usually with a big markup.

And yes, you'd have to jailbreak, then unlock, your iPhone 3G to use a non-AT&T SIM.


Good luck.

- Winston