<p>Why did she remove the SIM card from her iPhone if she is just using wifi? Couldn’t she just turn the Airplane mod off and leave wifi on?</p>
<p>You can use the viber app. Calls and texts are free. Some times service is not that great but overall I have kept in touch with my kids in France, Spain, the Netherlands and in Ecuador.</p>
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<p>Oh my, or should I say, Mon Dieu! That is a great warning, ccr.</p>
<p>I’d suggest to search this forum as there have been plenty of discussions about this precise issue. </p>
<p>Things have changed over the past years --such as the possibility to unlock a newer ATT Iphone. In general, sticking with the US carriers when abroad can be quite expensive. Getting a local SIM card is helpful, especially when traveling in groups. </p>
<p>Before the iPhone legal unlocking, our family used four cheap local phones and used local SIM cards. The main purpose was not to call the US, but to remain in close contact when we would separate. Something, we, the kids enjoyed. :)</p>
<p>PS I think that ATT still charges 10 cents to receive a text when roaming, but it might be different with other carriers. Fwiw, text charges CAN add up quickly.</p>
<p>Verizon will unlock a iphone 4s or 5 for international travel. And it’s a good tip that if you don’t change you sim card, then set iphone on airplane mode and disable any automatic updates…then you just have a wifi device but you won’t have surprise charges.</p>
<p>I am pretty sure ATT doesn’t charge to receive international text. D1 unlocked her iphone in UK 2 years ago and popped in a local sim card. I think she only paid ~$30 a month. She had unlimited data service, fairly good number of local and international call minutes. She was able to call me and her BF fairly regularly. I wonder with the iPhone 5, would it be as easy to get a local sim card.</p>
<p>Do you have an unlocked GSM quad band phone you can use? We were there just a couple of weeks ago and I can tell you what we did if so.</p>
<p>If you have wifi available, you can add money to your Skype account and use it to make actual phone calls from your computer or any device that can access wifi. My daughter just spent 5 months in Central Europe and that is how she called us (with time zone issues, it was difficult to find a good time for everyone to actually video Skype). It was very inexpensive - I don’t think she added more than $10 the entire time.</p>
<p>When I go home to England I have a pay as you go phone I use there. When I put extra minutes on it, it gives me a choice of free texts or free international calls. I pick the free international calls so I can call home. The phone was cheap and the minutes are pretty reasonable. I would guess they have something similar in France (my daughter and her husband borrowed the phone and bought simcards in Venice and Paris when they went on their honeymoon last year so I know they have the PAYGO sim cards)</p>
<p>One year, before I had the pay as you go phone, I went home because my Mum was very sick and called home quite often using my US AT&T phone when I was leaving or at the hospital. After a $1000 bill when I got home, I am very cautious about using my US phone in the UK. Even receiving a text from the US is very costly. Which reminds me, need to warn my son he can’t be texting back and forth to the US when he joins me in England next month.</p>
<p>“I am pretty sure ATT doesn’t charge to receive international text.”</p>
<p>You are correct. As long as you have a text plan, there is no charge. I am not sure where I got the ten cents charge. Probably from my parents warning my sister who could easily total 5,000 texts per month. </p>
<p>People without a text plan are charged 20 cents.</p>
<p>Cost for international text messaging
It costs just $0.25 to send a text message from the U.S. to an international number. For customers who frequently send text messages to family or friends overseas, AT&T’s International Long Distance Messaging package includes 100 text messages sent from the U.S. for $10.00 a month. That’s as little as $0.10 per message sent.</p>
<p>Sending an international text message from outside the U.S.
When traveling outside the U.S., it costs $0.50 to send a text message to either a U.S. number or an international number.</p>
<p>Receiving an international text message
If you have a domestic messaging package, international text messages you receive will be deducted from your monthly allotment of messages. If you do not have a domestic messaging package, text messages will bill at a rate of $0.20 per text message.</p>
<p>Just download one of the free apps app and use wifi hot spots…they are all over the place in Paris.</p>
<p>It’s my understanding that the Verizon iPhone5 comes unlocked. Theoretically, you should be able to pop in a local SIM. I sure hope this is the case because S and 2 buddies are going on a 3 week bike trip in Germany. Their plan is to ‘localize’ their iPhone 5’s.</p>
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<p>Oldfort, I’m not sure. It may be because I had read too many horror stories about iphone users thinking they weren’t going to be charged, but then they actually were. But I’m fairly certain D made this decision on her own, which says to me she received input from her peers. At any rate, we feel much more at ease having the SIM card out, and hope to not have any surprises on the bill.</p>
<p>The app works great through. We wish we would have known about this last year when she was in Australia. That’s a long and convoluted story about international phones, but it all worked out okay in the end. :)</p>
<p>Try WhatsApp for texting internationally. Of course, you need to have wifi to use it - but it is free and worked for us to communicate back and forth to D when she was in Prague. She turned her iphone on airplane mode and just used it as a wifi device. She had a local pay as you go phone for local calls and texts.</p>
<p>We traveled out of the country for three weeks and just turned our cell phones OFF when we left the U.S. we left the country for 10 days this year and did the same. And on this 10 day trip, we opted for no Internet either (a cruise…it was a VACATION!).</p>
<p>For a week, just put one of those emails out saying you will be “out of the office” until some date. And call it a day.</p>
<p>If you have Internet, you can Skype and you can even do that to cell phone numbers for about 5 cents a minute.</p>
<p>Xiggi…we have AT&T unlimited domestic text plan. No “alloyed monthly minutes…”…unlimited.</p>
<p>Does this mean international texts would be free?</p>
<p>Incoming would be free, not out going. </p>
<p>My kids and H know to turn their phones to airplane mode before they turn off the phone during take off.</p>
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<p>Maybe not make them, but receive them. We’ll be in Paris for a week this summer, with four elderly parents back in California and both D’s abroad. The D’s have smart phones so they’ll be able to reach us by Viber and/or Skype (assuming wi-fi availability on both sides), and one set of grandparents uses Skype–but in the event of an emergency we’ll want to be reachable by phone. I may just buy a cheap quad band international phone and SIM card with a US number (older D has one of these) to make it as straightforward as possible in the event that the grandparents need to reach us.</p>
<p>Airplane mode basically turns your iPhone into an iPod. You can still use wifi to connect to the Internet to check you email and chat via google chat or Skype. I’ve done it many times when I travelled to Europe, Mexico, Canada and Central Asia without any problems with unexpected charges. For short trips, I found this solution quite adequate. For longer stays, I got a onesimcard phone which worked just fine, even in Moscow (onesimcard was a suggestion of a CC poster - thank you!). My onesimcard incoming calls were free.</p>
<p>SlitheyTov - Not sure if it’s going to solve your problem. By getting a French sim card, calls from the US would be considered expensive international calls - your parents would need to pay. If you just use your US phone, when they call it would local call for your parents and you would pay the roaming charges (1.99/min). By getting a local sim call would only be useful for you to make calls, not to receive.</p>