booklet0519

I am going to be abroad for all of next year....

What do i do with my cell phone?

It's going to pretty expensive to call from my phone back to the US... and I'll probably use a landline with a phone card or get a local phone( i don't know yet if i will have computer acess).... but i don't want to lose my number here, which i'll need when i come back for college....

i've thought of giving it to my little brother for the year.....

any thoughts?

snowball

To keep your number you will need to keep your cell phone plan. You could reduce it to the cheapest plan your cell phone company offers.

While abroad, you can either rent a local phone or have your phone unlocked and buy a local sim card. Usually, a local sim card or phone is cheaper in Europe than a phone card; it will depend on where you are going and how ofter you plan to make calls. In Europe, incoming calls are usually free to a cell phone; you only pay for outgoing calls. Of course, the person calling you gets to pay for the calls!

If you do have internet access, you can use Skype to make calls home and to your friends. Of course there is AIM for IMing again if you have internet. Do you have an idea where you are looking to go?

tokenadult

If it's a GSM phone (that is, if you use T-Mobile or ATT), you could keep the handset and get a new SIM card for it overseas (except Japan).

booklet0519

I'll be in israel, but I don't know how frequent my internet acess will be

and yes, i use att

snowball

When my kids when to Israel we bought a sim card for Israel and had their phone unlocked. We are also with AT&T and AT&T gave us the unlock code for free. The sim I got for them had a great rate. When you need to add more time to the card, you just go into most any quickie mart or gas station and buy more minutes. It really couldn't be any easier. There are several companies that sell sim card, but I got ours from a man in Boston that only sells sims for Israel. I believe he worked with a cousin that lived in Israel to provide the cards. I will check my files and get you the name of the company.

Found it quicker than I thought:
Prepaid Israel SIM card - Cellcom Israel Talkman SIM cards - Orange Israel Bigtalk SIM Card

ticklemepink

YAY!!! It's so good to see somebody going to Israel!!!

Which program are you with? If you're with Hebrew U (which I was) it would be MUCH better to use their cell-phone plan (CellCom/TalkNSave) because of the in-network with other kids who have the cellphone. I left my regular cellphone at home (Verizon) and kept the number... for some reason it would be more expensive if my family kicked me off their plan for the 7 months i was there.

However, do use Skype when you can- like just under a dollar per hour to use it. The connection in the student dorms is a bit iffy so I always went over to Cafe Aroma for faster Internet connection so I could with people in the US. The internet connection is ridiculously slow but that's definitely not representative of how fast Israel's technology is actually

PS- Drink an Aroma coffee for me, I miss it SOOO much! If you have ANYYYYY questions, feel free to PM me and I would love to tell you all about surviving Israel!