<p>DD will be studying abroad next fall in Italy and Greece. She is attached the hip to her cell phone. Her current phone (which isn’t currently working and needs to be replaced) isn’t global ready. I looked into global ready phones but was SHOCKED when I discovered how much it was going to cost per text and per minute to use her phone abroad. Does anyone know anything about renting phones once you get to Europe? If that is an option, I won’t get her a global ready phone now.</p>
<p>You buy the phone and a service like Orange and then add credit for the phone. When the credit runs down, you top it up. In Europe you can receive calls for free. Dd2 had a blackberry in England for her gap year and loved it. The data plan cost was reasonable but when she was out of England and in Spain, she turned off the data feed because that became quite pricey.</p>
<p>Contact your provider and they have deals which brings the price down considerably. For example, if you pay Xamount you will have cheaper international everything for 6 months. More services or months, cheaper cost per service. I don’t remember the actual cost but when I took my GS troop to Europe I paid for one month service for international calls and email and it became reasonably priced, of course I only needed it for one week but they don’t go that short a period of time!</p>
<p>Dead cheap to buy a used phone locally and then use cards to add time/messages. I can’t imagine the US-based plan that would be cheaper to use in Europe.</p>
<p>S picked up a Vodafone (sp?) in Europe for about 20 Euro, it came with some pre-paid minutes. He could then re-charge the minutes as he needed to. Only problem - he was supposed to be able to re-charge it online but he could never get that to work, so he had to go to the store to do it (there are Vodafone stores everywhere). Every time they promised him it was fixed so that he could re-charge it online, but it never worked.</p>
<p>what we have found is that Vodaphone is great for within Europe (and same thing is happening with my daughter; no ability to top off online; has to go to the store)</p>
<p>we all have blackberrys with Verizon; her phone is global ready so all we had to do was let Verizon know to add the global package…all BBM messenging (sp?) is free with that package (and it’s minimal cost for the package)…</p>
<p>Her communication with us is through bbm, IM (online) and skype…</p>
<p>Friends around Europe through bbm or vodaphone…</p>
<p>She also might want to loosen that attachment once she’s there and decrease her phone calls and texts to a minimum since even with a Euro phone it can get expensive with a lot of international calls and zillions of texts. If she’ll have a laptop with her and internet connection then she should use a program like Skype to get some of her calling done at no cost.</p>
<p>Buy a phone in Italy or Greece, but check the charge plug to make sure its usable in both countries and/or get an adapter. As a number of people have said, in Europe you use a SIM card and “top it up” when it needs additional minutes. You can buy the cards to top it up at most tobacconist (sundries) shops. You simply scratch off a silver band (like a lottery ticket) and enter the numbers in your phone. Very simple.</p>
<p>The good news: Calls to a cell phone are free to the user. You can call your D at no cost to her. The bad news: You will be paying either international rates on your phone or cell phone rates with a calling card. The international calling cards show you great rates to Europe, etc., but those are for calls to “land lines”. The calls to cell phones are significantly higher. Example: Calls to a land line may be $.07/minute and calls to a cell phone may be $0.38/minute. Further bad news: Kids of this generation live through their cell phones - texting, calling, surfing the internet. All all of those things are very expensive using a european phone. Your D will simply need to keep those things to a minimum and/or use her laptop (which is also extremely useful for Skype or similar services).</p>
<p>Another “problem” with European phones is that SIM cards tend to be country-wide, not continent-wide. If you go from Italy to Greece, you will probably need to buy a new SIM card. Intra-SIM area rates for calls, i.e. Italy to Italy, are reasonable, but there will be variations between carriers. For example, Vodaphone may be very cheap if you call another Vodaphone user, but more expensive if you call a Wind (another Italian SIM company) user.</p>
<p>My advice would be to get a phone in Europe, but use it to contact you when she can talk (and you call back), use Skype for phone calls (if possible) and don’t use the phone for texting. One further suggestion - When my son was in Russia last year he started a blog to keep in touch with family and friends with what he was doing. Saved a lot of e-mails and let us know what was going on.</p>
<p>D spent a semester in Scotland. A friend who had been there the previous term gave her the cell phone he bought in Scotland. She used that for her calls to friends there. For other communication, she used skype & email. The really important thing to make sure of is that her U.S. phone is turned OFF while she is out of the country (she will want to have it, since she’ll use it at the U.S. airports, I’m sure). If it’s not off, there might be charges incurred in foreign countries even if she isn’t actually using it. I am not particularly savvy about that sort of thing, but other CC folks have warned about that.</p>
<p>We rented a phone from piccell for a semester in Italy. They have multi-country options too. It was very reasonable.</p>
<p>I agree with the suggestions to buy a local SIM card phone and get a new SIM card in each country. New SIM cards are cheap, between 5 and 20 Euros, and usually come with a starting balance that makes up for the cost of the card. Some phones will accept any SIM card, while others are restricted to one specific provider for the first 24 months. That’s something to pay attention to if your DD wants to invest into an expensive phone and use it in more than one country.</p>
<p>Taking a few minutes to shop service providers can save you a lot of money. For example, Vodafone is the single most expensive pre-paid provider in Germany and doesn’t have good coverage either. (I know that you are not interested in Germany, but it’s the country I am the most familiar with so I will stick with it for the sake of example.) Most providers (Vodafone excluded) would charge you 5-10 cents per minute or text, or you could opt for a monthly plan. In Germany these currently run at 35-40 Euros for unlimited (national) minutes, texts and mobile web. (Note that these are prepaid plans with no long-term commitment.)</p>
<p>As other posters have already said, don’t use the cell phone to make international calls. If Skype is not an option, I would suggest an international calling card. Then your DD would be charged for a local call and the calling card rate (this should be less than 5 cents/minute). </p>
<p>Lastly, when your DD researches her cell phone options in Europe over the web, make sure she uses the local language. If you search in English, you will find websites targeted at tourists (who are willing to pay more than any resident ever would). As a rule of thumb, cell phone service in Europe is cheaper than cell phone service in the US. If you are charged American rates or higher, you got a bad deal.</p>
<p>You could also buy a cheap unlocked phone here, and SIM cards for those countries. Switch the SIM cards according to the country.</p>
<p>A global-ready phone may be convenient but will probably be very expensive. Best is to do what others have suggested and get an unlocked phone here or a used one there and buy SIM cards for the individual country (unless she’ll only be in the country for a very short period of time).</p>
<p>I have bought quadband phones (can be used in any country) on ebay or through amazon for as little as 40-50 dollars. The phone needs to be “unlocked” so it isn’t bound to one service provider, but if it doesn’t come that way, you can get an unlocking code (I got this from ebay also when I accidentally bought a locked phone) for $10. There are also calling cards you can pay for with credit card online so you can call her cheap while she’s away (not as cheap as Skype, but no one has to be sitting at a computer). The one we use is pingo.com. Calls to landline phones in Europe are practically free, maybe 2 cents a minute, but probably about 15 cents a minute to a cell phone # in those coutries. Local SIM cards are definitely the way to go. The students will probably all be texting each other.</p>
<p>I had an Orange pay-as-you-go cell phone purchased in France for years. One drawback I found was that I could charge it as needed but only in France, although if it was charged, I could use it anywhere in Europe (that was all I tried).</p>
<p>My S is currently studying in Florence. His program suggested all the US students wait and buy their cell phones in Italy together–meaning the same provider. That way, they get free cell-to-cell and free texting to all those in their study abroad group.</p>
<p>We use free Skype video to talk to him pc to pc, but in the beginning before he got his internet situation set up, we’d also use Skype to call his Italian cell (calls are free incoming to S’s Italian cell). However, Skype’s pc to Italian mobile charges cost quite a lot (around 30 cents/minute–much less if to landline as mentioned above) so we keep these conversations short.</p>
<p>I suggest you call the university that sponsors your D’s study abroad and they can give you very up-to-date advice on best phone options.</p>
<p>My d. traveled all over Europe & more with a blackberry + an unlimited data plan. That plan was expensive (around $50/month) - but it gave her internet & email wherever she went. There was a modest charge for text messages (maybe 20 cents per message) and of course phone calls would be pricey – but she knew not to make voice calls or text. We emailed. Constantly.</p>
<p>Just to keep in mind, the needs of someone touring around will be different than the needs of a student, who will probably call and text locally a lot more. For the wanderer, you might look at OneSimCard.com. I haven’t used it, but might later. My daughter is studying abroad now and will probably be a wanderer afterwards.</p>
<p>My daughter was in the same situation, but during the study abroad phase, her program issued her a local cell phone. I am guessing that she would have been able to purchase prepaid minutes as needed for the phone. I don’t know if that is routine these days, but it might be something to check into.</p>
<p>madbean said:
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<p>My son found that to also be true when he was in Italy. It would not be strictly necessary to buy the phones together, but the SIM card service provider would have to be the same. It’s sort of a “friends and family” plan for the SIM card provider. I would check carefully about texting costs, because I thought they were expensive (given how often this generation texts).</p>