[MATHA531]

T Mobile USA charges $0.99 a minute, rounded up to the next minute, for roaming in Europe on its contract customers.

Also the frequency issue is a far from trivial issue, especially when choosing a prepaid local sim card in various countries. There was a sad case about a year and a half ago of a person going to Croatia who bought a "world tri band" phone on E bay, bought a Croatian sim card and when it didn't work was told by the idiot of a clerk at the mobile phone store that the problem was the phone was locked...no it wasn't but since it was an American 850/1800/1900, the Croatian operator she chose operated only on 900.

The problem can be critical if you buy Nokia phones because they don't have the decency to number the American phone differently from the European phone. Thus a very cheap entry level Nokia phone, the 3120 comes as the 3120 for worldwide use with 900/1800/1900 and the 3120B for American use (850/1800/1900) but rarely do sellers know the difference nor does the B figure predominantly in the documentation or whatever.

Being partial to Nokias, this has always been a problem at least for me. Also, for a long time, T Mobile USA which operates only on 1900 when it sold tri bands, sold 900/1800/1900 but in order to keep up with the Jonses (AT&T), T Mobile USA has been forced because of the limitations of its coverage to sign roaming agreements in the USA with some smaller carriers who operate on 850. Thus for the past 2 years or so, tri bands sold by T Mobile USA have been of the 850/1800/1900 variety. It also means that Americans never get the latest and the bestest (!) of the new phones as the manufacturers for obvious reasons, do not bastardize their all of their latest phones and thus onlhy a small minority of tri bands are available to Americans.

Now of course the obvious solution are quad bands. I don't particularly like Motorola phones and have been told (never having owned one) that their early quad band models sucked. Apparently there has been some improvement lately. Nokia has not embraced quad band for anything other than their top of the line phones. T Mobile USA has not sold SE phones for a while ever since the fiasco they had with the T68, the T300, the T310 and even the T610 although again I hear SE has upgraded its product line and their quad band phones today are pretty good.

Moral of the story...be careful when selecting a phone from a North American provider to use in Europe. If it is being used for roaming, chances are you won't have a problem because usually there is a roaming agreement with some provider on 1800 and the phone will seek it out....OTOH if using a North American tri band for a local sim, make sure it is a true world phone (900/1800/1900) not the ones manufacturers have had to modify to meet the "contrary mnded" USA market.