Here's a question, a friend of mine travels to the 3 countries above a couple of times a year...just bought an unlocked quad band phone and is unsure about whther or not one of the international cards will suit him for all 3 or not...any suggestions?

Use will be occasional outgoing to US, some outgoing/incoming within the EU...

Also, anyone know if a US number can be "call-forwarded" to an international SIM number? Are there "hidden" charges to watch out for?

I'd say any of those with free inbound will work fine in those countries. If friend expects to receive majority of calls -- for FREE, then that will be fine.

OTOH, if he plans on doing lots of local calling out while IN COUNTRY (ie IT to IT), the friend might want local SIM cards; they will probably be cheaper. Or he might consider a callback service.

There are seveal other posts where similar questions are posed. If the friend is heavy into SMSing, then that will be a factor. Again, local card will probably be cheaper. Who wants to spend 49 e-cents per SMS message? My son with a postpay contract has 1000 messages (in & out, mind you) on TMO USA for $9,99 per month and uses ~650 per month. Now let's say half are in and half are outbound. @ 49 e-cents per 325 outbound messages, that is ~$200 per month for SMSing. Ouch!

True answer is that the lowest price will depend on the exact nature of usage.

Stan

Do you mean a landline? Or do you mean a mobile...

Until February 2004, T Mobile USA used to allow you to call forward from your t mobile US mobile phone to European sims at their then rate of 29?/minute...it was very good. They withdrew that suddenly one day for reasons they have never explained.

All along, verizon on my landline allowed you to callforward from your landline to a foreign sim but until January 2005, you had to set it once and directly from your phone using *72...they had remote call forwarding but would not allow you to set the remote call forwarding to a foreign number. The way around that was to use companies like k1ll8 with 800 numbers although kall8 service was never that reliable.

Beginning in January 2005, verizon on my landline now allows me to use remote call forwarding to set call forwarding to any number in the world via my ld carrier. My ld carrier is AT&T ld....their rates to most European sims is around 35 to 40 cents/minute not terrible but not a bargain however...

at present their rate to forward to a Liechtenstein mobile (such as United Mobile) is 11?/minute which makes it a very enticing method of dealing with this.

Thanks for the information - for this purpose, sms is not a big part of use, and the phone will not be used for "lots" of local calling...

Also, thanks for the call forwarding info - do you know if the same information applies to forwarding a mobile number? FYI the carrier in the USA is Verizon wireless...

You'd have to check with Verizon wireless about any call-forwarding options. TMO postpaid allows me to call-forward and I believe the minutes come from my bucket. I have often call-forwarded to

1. my home landline
2. my parent's home landline while I was visiting

All in US of course.

When I go to europe this summer, I think I will choose option 1. That will cut down on the voicemail #s I will have to check to keep "up-to-date.'

Stan