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vtwo

Well-known member
Joined
Jul 18, 2005
Posts
329
what type phone/plans do you guys use when overseas? I have heard of Mobal, but there has to be a better way to call out and receive calls when in Europe and the pacific.
 
...

Ive made a few posts lately tossing around ideas for this same situation, as I am overseas a lot.

I finally bit the bullet and decided to give T-Mobile a chance. I got rid of Sprint and signed a one-year contract with T-Mobile, just to give it a shot.

From what I can tell, you can pretty much roam in any country you will encounter, unless you go to some really out of the way places. But most of Africa, China, Middle East, Europe was in their roaming range.

But your going to pay some really hefty roaming charges though. I frequent the Middle East, namely Iraq, the Med, and Europe. Iraq was something like $5.00/minute. We also frequent Cyprus, and that was around $1.50 a minute.

I dont plan on using this phone for just chatting all the time to people, only when I need to make a short phone call to the fuelers, flight planning service, hotel, my driver, etc.

All my lengthy conversations will be over Skype, as it is free and has worked in most of the places I frequent. And also email, as I do most of comm's over that.

(I did a check, and T-mobile does have Asia and europe in its coverage areas).

What I did was get the cheapest plan I could, only 300 minutes a month, since I would rarely be in the US and the Intl minutes dont come out of that 300/month. It was $39.00/month.

Another option is to purchase overseas, a Quad-band, unlocked, GSM phone. Then for the countries you are in, just buy a local Sim chip (that will give you a local cell number), and then use prepaid minutes to fill it up.

The math would say that this method would probably be cheaper, but a little less user-friendly as if you have 8 Sim chips, then you have 8 different phone numbers. I have seen Sim chips sell from 20-80 bucks a pop depending on the country.

I decided to pay a little extra on this trial, just for the piece of mind that my phone will work in whatever country I am in, and people can all reach me over the same phone number, etc. I got tired of having no cell phone and looking at pay phones in terminals I couldnt figure out how to use.....

Now i'm waiting for someone to come back and post a reply saying how T-Mobile service stinks overseas and they hated it.....I knew two people who were using T-Mobile while in Afghanistan and had no problems with it at all.

And I even got to keep the same mobile number I have had for almost 10 years now.

Some people will mention getting a Sat. Phone.

I dunno. I had a Sat phone for the past year, and had the hardest time ever getting it to even get a good signal, and its bulky. The use-charges seemed to be on par with the roaming charges ill be getting now.

Hope this helps.
 
At$t

I have been using AT$T for a few years now. It works well everywhere from Russia down into Africa and the Middle East (Except Lybia). The only downside is the roaming charges. $4.99 per minute here in Russia.

I use the blackberry pearl with unlimited international email and data plan. This has been very useful when I do not have internet acess for email or skype. I also use Iskoot for acessing Skype from my mobile along with jivetalk for yahoo and msn messengers on the data side of the phone.

TC
 
pc6

thanks for the iskoot. How do you like it. I'm working on putting it on my bb right now.

D
 
I have not had many problems with Iskoot as long as I have a good signal and data coverage. Most of my calls are the same quality as being on a computer and others are not so good.
 
I see that it uses phone calls instead of data.

If you're overseas and calling home. How is it making the call. Via data or local number (which is the same as making a long distance call with cingular)
 
I wanted to make a correction on the Iskoot. It uses the data plan for your contact list and your normal airtime minutes and or roaming for the calls made with skype. Calling from the USA internationally it might be a good deal to save on international long distance charges.
 
If you have an unlocked GSM phone (and if your contract is up with your carrier just call and they'll provide you the code to unlock), you can buy a roaming SIM card vs. buying many local ones that works almost anywhere. Rates vary, you won't get as cheap as buying the many local ones, but if you use the phone once in a while, it's no big deal. Most places are $.49 per minute, some climb up to $1.29 or a little more. That combined with a calling card for family to call you back at the hotel is not bad. I bought my SIM card at telestial.com, it has a lot of info on the site. I got the Passport, it seemed like the best blend of value for me, and has free incoming calls in a lot of places, if someone in the US calls the 800 number to call you when you're in a free spot, it's free for them and $.39 per minute for the 800 number surcharge. The GSM phone works in a lot of places except Korea and Japan, where they use a different protocol. You can buy a phone that handles that band as well, if you go there a lot.
 
Thanks,
I think I am going the route of buying an unlocked gsm phone off of ebay and then getting the sim chips for the country's I am in. I will look into the roaming sim chip. I think that would be good for family to leave me messages and the call back on skype later
 

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