<p>My daughter bought a SIM card from Cellular Abroad, which gave her an Italian phone number. She just replaced the one in her Blackberry, and it was much cheaper than an AT&T international plan. For US calls, we just Skyped a lot. Texting out was free; texts received were 10 cents.</p>
<p>We used PICCELL for both our daughters. When older daughter studied abroad in Rome, we rented the phone and usually she called us and then I called back from my landline using phone cards-plus we emailed back and forth. With younger daughter, we bought phone from PICCELL and rented sim card. Incoming calls from US were free. I also rented phone from them when I traveled to Europe to see her…still have phone and you can use rent sim cards by country from them when travelling now. We did Skype also with her. When in Israel on Birthright, the program had cheap phone rentals from Cell-Tech which specializes in phones for Israel and London and is conveniently located in my town. I rented phone from them when she did a between semester theater program in London. When I was in both Europe and Israel this fall, found it just as cheap for the short time to simply enable one of our regular cell phones.</p>
<p>Please be aware that buying a cell before leaving might create issues abroad. There is a pan-European system that collects information about stolen phones. Unfortunately, perfectly legitimate phones show up as well. </p>
<p>When a phone shows up on that system, it will be blocked by the local SIM operator and will require quite a bit of work to get unblocked. This never happened in Spain, but did happen in Belgium and the Netherlands. Changing SIM cards will not eliminate the problem. On the other hand, phones purchased in Europe are easy to clear with a “local” invoice. With the low price of European phones, it seems easier to simply buy them upon arrival and let a local operator install and check the SIM cards, especially when buying several ones for a group or a family. Being able to talk for free in a circle is very useful. </p>
<p>As other have said, Skype (or similar) is very helpful. In some countries, the data plan for iPad have become very affordable, In others, it is easy to trim down a data SIM card. This opens the door to run Skype on a smart phone or iPad. However, it is important to check the cost country-by-country. </p>
<p>Lastly, prepaid phone calls to call the USA are still a bargain compared to use a cell phone to call home. And, of course, using a US cell phone abroad remains a perilous exercise that can cause nasty surcharges.</p>