Alternate ways for U.S. users to travel cheaply, phonewise
 

Wasn't sure where to post these ideas:

1. Think I mentioned previously that U.S. T-Mobile subscribers who get one of there UMA/wifi phones can make calls from anywhere in the world and charged as tho you were at home. That means you can make and receive calls and have them simply come out of your minute bucket. For $10/mo. extra, you get unlimited minutes. Downside - you have to have access to a wifi signal.

2. For those few who are grandfathered in on T-Mobile's old intl. roaming plan, you can still get incoming calls in most of Europe for 29 to 32 cents/min. Since that plan usually entails expensive rates for calling back to U.S., or, many times expensive calls simply calling numbers locally - you can, by signing up w. Enlinea's callback service, call back to U.S. for 34 to 37 cents/min. Calls to numbers in other first world countries (landlines) would be 1 to 4 cents more. Downside - This only really pays in first world countries (Europe, Israel, and a few others where T-M's incoming rates on this plan are cheap.
New T-M users (since about 2004) pay 99 cents/min. for both incoming and outgoing in these same countries.

I plan on making heavy use of both these options this coming week in Ireland.
...mike

NO free lunch in Germany
 

Can't speak for Ireland, but I did not find a free (WIFI) lunch in Germany. Reported elsewhere on "low" rates.

I have the NEW T-MO worldclass rates and left the SIM out the entire time I was there. NO POINT.

Bon voyage.

Another suggestion is to be aware of and use carriers who assign you a local number while roaming. I ran into this in Indonesia when a carrier (ProXL I think) sent me a SMS telling me I they had assigned me a local number for receiving calls. I programmed that number into Voicestick's forwarding and stuck them into my PRL for the rest of the time I was in Indonesia.

Orange UK "Call abroad" SIM. Get one.

I got one Saturday. What a great deal. 5p/min to Canada and the US (and some other countries) and cheap to other countries too.

I got a killer phone number too! 0796 xyx yxxx! :)

I think you could find cheaper forward and callback options with an local SIM - for Ireland 9 or 10 eurocents a minute from Justvoip or Voipcheap, and scope for free int'l sms (for a year, then top up if you want) if you choose O2 Ireland and use a Java application I can tell you about.

Some British SIMs have free roaming in Ireland - 3 Like Home, or add-on options on others like O2 - plus the IoM or Jersey ones of course, and then JV and VC rates are 5 and 8 cents.

There is scope to get down to a cent or two with one of the UK and some other country SIMs, but this is rather elaborate, using other services as well, and waiting for 2 or 3p/min cashback for 3 months.

For regular travellers it's worth thinking about the Globalsim.de forwarded DID option that Przemolog posted about yesterday, and two other products launching in the next few weeks might merit a look to see if they match their hype

DRN - That is great to know. How many carriers in the world do this? As i recall, technically when you are roaming, the system does assign you a temporary number. Problem is, you never (usually) know what it is.

...mike

My understanding is that you really don't get a fixed temporary number, rather it is assigned from a pool of such numbers only when a call is in progress. When your home carrier tells the roamed carrier it has an incoming call the roamed carrier then tells the home carrier what number to send it to. It all happens in a couple of seconds.

Having a known, fixed number that is good for an extended period of time is fairly unusual.