Cell Phone in Europe???

[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