<p>i was searching for some info on these, but most of the posts here weren’t recent, so i thought i’d ask for some current tips.</p>
<p>my son is leaving next week. he is heading to austria for about 3 months. we all have iphones and we aren’t sure whether to unlock his, buy a prepaid, rent something in austria, use a calling card, or ??? We have skype and we plan to use that, but we think we’d like to have something on hand in case of emergencies? or is that just silly since we’ve survived for years and years before cell phones?</p>
<p>any thoughts or ideas would be greatly appreciated.</p>
<p>If you’re going to use skype and just want something to use in emergencies, I’d have your own cell phone turned on for service in Austria. Check with your plan. There may be restrictions you can place on what numbers can be called, in case the phone gets lost. </p>
<p>Check text messaging costs for Europe, too. They may be different.</p>
<p>Unlock it and have him buy a prepaid sim card when he gets to Austria. Otherwise the charges will be exorbitant when he calls other numbers in Austria. If he has a contract with AT&T for the iPhone, contact them–they will reduce the payments to the minimum plan they offer (something like $40/month, which is probably less than his voice&data plan) for the duration of his trip. </p>
<p>There is also an option to buy international service through AT&T, which would make more sense if he mostly plans to call you and other US numbers.</p>
<p>If he plans to use the phone on a very limited basis - i.e. quick check-in calls (“Mom - I’m here and it’s great!”) and emergencies and will use Skype for longer normal calls, just contact AT&T and have them enable his line for receiving calls internationaly. I think the cost is somewhere around 99 cents/minute but it might have gone up. Text messages are cheaper but expensive enough that you don’t want hime sending/receiving zillions of text messages. Check with AT&T on this also as you might want to do some blocking to minimize the cost. </p>
<p>My D went to Scotland and just used her AT&T cell phone and it was fine - we just limited the length of the calls.</p>
<p>My daughter is going to Australia to study this July. I think I am going to try to get her local cell phone (haven’t check the price yet). I am sure she is going to want to text her local friends just like when she is at home. She could use calling card and Skype to call us and her friends back home. I have used international calling card to call home when I am oversea, and it’s only a few cents/min.</p>
<p>We bought a phone from Telestial (having seen it discussed at CC), and it has UK phone #, free incoming calls from most places, at least for us, though charge to caller. We put $$ on the phone #, have to use it every six months to keep the # (from anywhere, quad band). It is not all that convenient to use, so less tendency to overuse it, as S found when he was in Germany, though we could easily reach him. For actual conversations of any length go to a call center, 2-4 cents a minute. I-phone very expensive to use in Euorpe, but if you take it, be sure to turn off the internet features, except no charge to use the Wi-fi when at a free center.</p>
<p>We have a phone from telestial that we have been uxing over the past year. It isn’t a problem at all, and we have it set to automatically add money when it gets low so we don’t have to remember. It is probably too late to get one now for a trip in a week though.</p>
<p>My son is currently on an overseas trip and we had the same issue - although not an I-phone. He chose to take a quad phone from over here and use a local SIM Card. He was leaving around the middle of Dec.and so around Dec 1, he tried to purchase a SIM card through Telestial, but they did not have it on stock. So, a friend from the country he was travelling to, mailed him a SIM card. It arrived a few days before my son left. It was great to have the SIM card before leaving because the phone number could be distributed to family (especially worrywort mom!) and friends before departure. Also, you can make calls as soon as you get off the plane. BTW, we could have purchased the SIM card on e-bay but the cost would have been 15x. </p>
<p>Here is some info that the OP might already know but perhaps could help those who don’t:</p>
<p>*make sure you have a quad phone (or a phone that is capable of operating at the local frequency)</p>
<p>*Make sure you have the appropriate charger. We use 110Vin the US but many countries use 220V. The quad phones usually have the correct charger (110V-220V) but check anyway to make sure.</p>
<p>*with T-mobile, the phone you are unlocking should have been in service with T-mobile for a minimum of three months. </p>
<p>*the unlocking process is really easy. With T-mobile - we just called them and they emailed the instructions/code within 24 hours.</p>
<p>*our family doesn’t use text messages but we were told that our particular brand of Samsung quad phone will not work for text messages.</p>
<p>We were new to this whole process of unlocking phones,quad phones, SIMcards, etc. and so had to read up on all of this. The FAQ on the Telestial web page was very useful.</p>