<p>Onesimcard comes with a US number in addition to another number so the calls would be free to your friends and family (small charges will apply to the card holder). Unfortunately, texts can be sent only to the primary number (mine was an Estonian number).</p>
<p>If both you and your contacts in the US have iPhones and use iMessage, texts are sent as data, so you can text for free over a free wifi.</p>
<p>oldfort, I’d be getting a sim card that comes with both a european number and a us number (the onesimcard phone that Bunsen Burner mentions–I might’ve been the one to suggest it :)). That’s what we’ve gotten D1. We’ve been mostly using Viber and Skype to communicate with her, but to reach her on her phone we call a US-based number.</p>
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<p>Technology does change all the time, and so do the tactics of US carriers to extract the last pennies. Of course, the legal unlocking of the iPhone by ATT has opened the doors to using the phone abroad with a local SIM card. </p>
<p>I remember I used to rout the US calls to a different number before leaving.</p>
<p>I found a good solution to use the original iPad by using a combination of Google Voice and Talkatone to get the voicemails “texted” to me via Wifi or local cellular data.</p>
<p>To prevent “technology changes”, I check my AT&T account and make sure that no international plans have been unknowingly added to my account and the international roaming is turned off. Then my phone is turned into an iPod as soon as I land in Europe even without switching on the airplane mode. :)</p>
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When it comes to emergency situations I don’t really worry about whether the call will be $0.20/min or $2/min - it’s an emergency. Chances are reasonable that you’ll never really receive the emergency call in the first place because if things were predictably dire you probably wouldn’t go on the trip in the first place. Of course unexpected things can happen but in those instances it’s fairly insignificant if one ends up spending more for a few calls in the emergency situations. It’s the cost of the routine calls that can add up - especially the routine calls/texts college aged people make nowadays since they tend to be on the phone endlessly.</p>
<p>To put my money where my mouth is, I’ve just taken my phone abroad with me. I didn’t receive any family emergency calls, thankfully, but I did receive a few work emergency calls but since I was cognizant of the costs I kept the minutes to a minimum (a call seldom needs to go longer than 3-5 minutes) and I don’t think I even bothered about the costs later because it was insignificant.</p>