River Cruise... need help with phone!
 

My wife and I are taking a river cruise from Hungary to Netherlands this summer and I have been given the task, by the wife and in-laws, of getting a celphone that will allow them to keep in touch from the US to us while we are cruising.

So, we will be in Hungary, Austria, Germany, and Netherlands and I am hoping that we can get one phone, and one phone number to cover our entire trip. Cost is a bit of an issue, but the in-laws are helping us and I want to make it "easy" for them to just dial a number and get us wherever we are.

I want to get the phone now, so that I can program the number into the in-law's phone for them, in advance (and try it out?!? before we go:whistling: ).

Is this possible?:confused:

Thanks ahead of time for any help you can offer...

Phil

Other options......
 

Phil,

Welcome aboard!

Have you read the sticky on Americans going to Europe?

Several other things for you to consider:

1. Time differences between US (CA?) and Europe - possibly 9 hours

Unless you want to keep your phone on all day AND night, WHY do they need to reach YOU at any time -- immediately? Yes, it is nice, but is it really needed?

2. Costs. I just called a friend in Germany on his cell using an MCI prepaid card. 52 cents per minute. Landline calls are less. Luckily my call did not go thru and I switched to my Onesuite card -- that was only 23 cents per minute to the cell line. Landline calls to Germany cost like 3 cents per minute on Onesuite.

Using an European or international SIM is going to increase their costs quite a bit. Are they really ready for that?

3. Would you be calling OUT much from the cell? How much? Or would it be just inbound? With most of the international cards, inbound will be free in the countries you are visiting.

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It sounds as if this is a ONCE in a great while (life-time?) trip. Not sure you should invest $50 in a phone (assuming eBay purchase), if you don't have one PLUS the purchase of one SIM and top-ups (either single-country or international). If you have a suitable phone already, then the equation is a bit different. If you plan on calling out, be sure to buy enough top-ups in advance. If you have a German T-Mobile phone and your balance is 0 and you are in Hungary, you can't just buy a top up card for that SIM in Hungary.

By the way, I am selling a second used, unlocked Nokia tri-band on eBay -- sold one last weekend that went for a total of $43 total, including shipping.

If they can deal with notifying you and your calling them back at a pre-arranged time, then you can call them back with a calling card. You can for instance, agree to call them every evening (for example) your time in Europe) perhaps before you go to bed from you hotel room. I take it you will be staying in hotels.

Now, I am not saying you should not buy an European or international SIM and phone....

Is there someone in your family, work, circle of friends who travels and could loan you a phone?

Do you have a US cell phone and who is the carrier? If you have a Cingular or T-Mobile, you could take the US phone. They should roam although you might have to request them to turn on that feature for you. Your in-laws costs will be low; yours will be quite high. I don't recommend that but that is one solution, but that is simple.

If you have a cell phone or voicemail in US, the in-laws can call that number and leave messages. When you have a chance, you can call from a landline phone with a US calling card and retrieve your voicemail. You can also call them back.

Stan

Thanks for your reply
 

We will be on a river cruise ship going from Hungary, through Austria, Germany, and ending in Netherlands.

I am thinking, for ease of use for my in-laws, I might go to the T-Mobile store and get a "global" roaming Prepaid phone from them with a US number. That way, my in-laws can call to a US number. It looks like the cost would be $0.99/minute. Rather steep, but the convenience of it all might just be worth it (and the high cost might possibly keep the "talk" to a minimum;) ).

No shore stays at all, true? Same ship, true? Ask what, if any, phone facilities for passengers the ship has. The ship may have some kind of phone where you could call out.

Sorry to disappoint you, but I don't think T-Mobile prepaid has a global roaming service/option. That is contract only unless it is brand new on prepaid. I keep up with these things and there has been talk and speculation that they would allow this, but I have seen nothing about it actually happening. The latest is since about the 1st of the year that prepaid will now roam in Canada and Mexico only.

I am hoping some of the Europeans will chime in.

Vodaphone (UK) has a "passport" (Reiseversprechen in German) program. It does a connection fee of 75 eurocents for up to 60 minutes when roaming. If you bought a German SIM and could activate it IN ADVANCE from the US, your inbound calls would be free to you while you were in Germany. There is a VODA in Hungary, which seems to be your first stop. As before, however, your in-laws would be paying a fairly high rate to call your cell phone. And you would be paying to receive calls apart from when you were in the "home" country. I do not know if you can complete such a transaction while in the states.

Good luck.

Stan

Here's the deal..

There is no simple answer....you're going through many countries so the easiest answer is an international sim. Until about three weeks ago, it was a slam dunk. I would recommend United Mobile which has free reception in all those countries along with callbackworld to call out and also provide cheap ways of them calling you.....a cheap European unlocked gsm dual band but make sure it is 900/1800 would do.....however in the last couple of weeks, calls to United Mobile via callbackworld have doubled to 29¢/minute...not outrageously bad but not the bargain it once was.

However, AT&T ld, if that is your relatives' ld carrier, still only charges 11¢/minute to call a United Mobile mobile provided they are on the $1/month international plan.

There is an Icelandic international sim called o9 which is cheaper on callbackworld and you get get a US toll free number with callbackworld which your relatives can use to reach you toll free to them in the USA and 16¢/minute to you...again it requires an unlocked gsm phone.

Using T Mobile USA international roaming is awfully expensive as you noted and you will pay to both make and receive calls and is not available on prepaid. You need a contract with them.

Also be aware that the eu might have something in place by the summer (although it's run into a problem) which might allow you to receive calls throughout Europe if you purchase a local sim card in any of the eu countries for as little as 0,20€ (about $0.27 US) but that's been held up a bit as the European telcoms are fighting tooth and nail to keep their asininely high roaming rates...we'll see on that.

Ultimately whatever you choose will have advantages and disadvantages and please don't let anybody tell you it's the wrong decision...it's ultimately your money.

In the interim, read up on this form about United Mobile, o9, GT-Sim, travelsim and so on. It will come down, ultimately, I would suppose to no mobile phone, going with T Mobile USA intrnational roaming or an international sim card.

Good points, but....

I think the Vodafone passport should be added to the list of options.

Also, unless he HAS T-Mobile USA postpaid (and it seems silly to sign up a US cell service just for an overseas trip, especially if they already have another post-paid cell phone provider) - or maybe Cingular, but I don't know if they allow global roaming.

Stan

Thanks for the information.

So, let me see if I understand. If I got an unlocked GSM phone, Icelandic international SIM with callback, my in-laws would just call an 800 number to get to me. I would use a callback number to call them, right?

I almost understand callback, but am not sure if I have it right. Could you go over it, for a thick-headed ludite?

Oh, I forgot to mention, I have Verizon here. Their plans are even higher than T-Mobile ($1.49/min)! I don't want to do that...

If I could just figure out an understandable plan that I could impliment early enough to teach my in-laws how to use, then I would be pleased as punch!

My in-laws talk to the (only child) daughter many times a day when at home and daily when we are out and about... to make matters worse, they are "babysitting" our Yorkie while we are gone and that makes them even more "touchy" about being able to be in contact with us!

Thanks fellas, this is kind of an "in-law" thing :wink: and to top it off, my mother in law is FULL ITALIAN!

Normal callback (Icelandic SIM): dial destination number; you will get a message on the phone such as call not allowed; a few second later your phone will ring and you answer it; the destination number you dial first will ring; you should be charged only if the call connects -- that is you let it ring until you connect.

Callback World double callback: EVERYTHING above PLUS (or but you are dialing your CBW number, not the final destination number) so when you get to the last point where you answer the [first] callback, you let it ring once and hang up again. CBW will call your phone back. Answer and at that point you dial the TRUE destination number.

Stan

Be sure you check out the rates since YOU will be paying for the inbound 800 calls as well as the outbound using CBW.

Also, as was recommended, you might want to scan the site for people's experiences with 09 before you jump in there.

I have UM and CBW and have had some mixed experiences. It does not work 100% of the time.

Stan

The chief disadvantages of o9 are

1. no voicemail provisions

2. no coverage in Switzerland.

3. No text messaging.

UM, as noted, has worked very well for incoming for me throughout all of Europe. Callbackworld has worked pretty well but has sporadically had problems. Using United Mobile to call the USA without callbackworld is expensive but less so than most roaning situations that exist today. Biggest problem with UM is the incoming calls on most long distance carriers in the USA are asininely high (you have to check out rates to Liechtenstein mobiles) with the exception being the $1/month AT&T plan noted above (but as with all these rates, I suppose if too many people find out they will raise the rates as so many of the US ld carriers have done to rates to Liechtenstein mobiles with the final culmination being the 100% increases in rates using callbackworld which occurred a scant three weeks ago).

On this site, you can read up in the operators sections on the various international sims and by going to the web sites, you can check out incoming rates to the various countries you will be going through. The international sims use mobile phone numbers in Liechtenstein (United Mobile), Iceland (o9), the Isle of Man (which is really a UK number and some of the voip operators have very good rates to them) and Estonia. Also I do agree that vodafone passport might be a suggestion but getting it started and up and running from the USA might be a problem.

And as noted, if the eu communications people have their way, it might be (but don't hold your breath for this summer) that sooner or later roaming in Europe on any carrier will be the same as roaming is in the USA.

Ultimately, as noted, the sites to check out for rates are www.callbackworld.com, www.voicestick.com and www.kall8.com. All can give you reasonably cheap US numbers to reach various European sims but rates can vary by country of the sim.

You have already received excellent information from the very knowledegable folks here.

I just want to add that, since it seems like ease of your family getting to you is very important, you may want to get a free US number from voicestick.com, and just forward it to whatever international/foreign sim you go with. The only cost to you will be the forwarding cost. For example to forward voicestick to UM it's $0.30 I think, and it's $0.16 to a vodafone UK number. Check their website for more info.

T-Mobile has that? I haven't seen one of those. However, look at the international SIM section on this site. It sort of depends if you want to pay the tab for the in-laws calls or you want them to pay the tab. There are several cards that feature "free incoming" calls in most of Europe.

I was going to suggest Yackie since they give you a US number, so I went to their site to check the rates for those countries, and here is what I found posted in the news section. So, yackie may not be an option at this time.

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Dear Yackie Mobile Customers; Do to some changes we are in the process of making, to advance our technology toward the future of GSM telecommunication; all Yackie Mobile services are temporally suspended. We apologize for any inconvenience; we will provide you with alternative services until we have completed our upgrades to our system.

I've pretty much written Yackie off. They just do not seem reliable.