Best Phone & Service Combo For My Needs?

[KarenM]

I will take a 3 month solo trip in a leased car to France and Italy in late August. I've researched phone options till my eyes glaze over. I'm thinking of using either United-Mobile or callbackworld, but am not sure if they are the same thing. Clarification appreciated.??

Since I don't have a cell phone here at home (CA), I wanted to get a phone which would be good for Europe use, but also can be used back home for occasional 'on-the-road' calls.?? Does anyone know if the Mobal $99 phone would serve this purpose? And, if so, can I buy their phone but use United-Mobile or callbackworld services instead of Mobal's? I'm reluctant to call and ask, for obvious reasons.

Needs of phone and service:

1. calls within France and Italy for res's, info, calling acquaintances--hopefully free or cheap incoming from within those countries

2. Ease and cheapness of calls from U.S. to me in Europe

3. Can receive messages??

4. Ease and cheapness of calls from me in Europe to US

5. Capacity to use phone once home in US

I am leery of doing the eBay thing for various reasons. I would so appreciate input on which phone options and/or services you think would best suit this package of needs.

Thanks,
Karen

Let me know if this is better for a different forum.

If this post would be better served on a different forum, please let me know.

[Bossman]

Have you taken a look at this? It will probably help if you do. Then you can ask specific questions afterwards.

http://www.prepaidgsm.net/forum/inde...showtopic=1323

[DRNewcomb]

1. Unlocked GSM phone with 900 & 1800 MHz bands. (eBay)
2. For a 3-month trip get local SIMs in both Italy & France.
3. VOIP service with call forwarding (e.g. VoiceStick.com)
4. A good callback service.

Not sure right now which are the best choices for item #2.

[snaimon]

Originally Posted by KarenM

I will take a 3 month solo trip in a leased car to France and Italy in late August. I've researched phone options till my eyes glaze over. I'm thinking of using either United-Mobile or callbackworld, but am not sure if they are the same thing. Clarification appreciated.??

Since I don't have a cell phone here at home (CA), I wanted to get a phone which would be good for Europe use, but also can be used back home for occasional 'on-the-road' calls.?? Does anyone know if the Mobal $99 phone would serve this purpose? And, if so, can I buy their phone but use United-Mobile or callbackworld services instead of Mobal's? I'm reluctant to call and ask, for obvious reasons.

Needs of phone and service:

1. calls within France and Italy for res's, info, calling acquaintances--hopefully free or cheap incoming from within those countries

2. Ease and cheapness of calls from U.S. to me in Europe

3. Can receive messages??

4. Ease and cheapness of calls from me in Europe to US

5. Capacity to use phone once home in US

I am leery of doing the eBay thing for various reasons. I would so appreciate input on which phone options and/or services you think would best suit this package of needs.

Thanks,
Karen

Let me know if this is better for a different forum.

If this post would be better served on a different forum, please let me know.

You'll have different opinions.

UM and CBW are different, but you can/should use them together in Europe.

Don't recommend MOBAL

Don't recommend UM for US.

PERSONALLY, see if you have a friend with a spare unlocked GSM phone you can borrow. I really think it is too late to get NEW US service and an unlocked phone if you don't go the Ebay route. You may be able to find a dealer that sells unlocked TRI or QUAD band phones. For US choose quad (ie 850, 900, 1800, 1900).

You could consider 2 local SIM cards, one for France and one for Italy. With the UM you will have FREE incoming in both countries, but people will or may be reluctant to call you -- it will be long distance for them.

Most EU nationals and UM have messaging. UM is expensive, however, to send.

If you want to use the PHONE in the US, forget the UM and EU SIMs. You will probably want to START with a NEW US prepaid plan, either T-MO, Cingular or one of the knock-offs. This will depend on coverage in your area. This for occaisional use, you say. Don't think you need post-pay. YET.

Ease and cheap don't go together when it comes to calls to EU cell phones - usually > 20 cents per minute. Check direct dial (obviously easiest) rates from your carrier or for the folks who might be calling you (the Liechtenstein cell, French cell and Italian cell rates), especially if you only have a cell. If you are staying in one place longer, calling from US to the land line phone in your hotel room or wherever, will be less expensive (< 5 cents per minute).

Some of this and more is in the refernced thread.

[snidely]

Since the OP is a "newbie", I wouldn't rec. UM. She doesn't even have a cel phone here!
UM's service is NOT standard and would be diff. for a newbie to understand. Using UM would not be good because it can cost people who want to call her mucho dinero.
I would simply rec. she get an unlocked quad band phone off ebay. Some Motorola phones can be had new for $100 or less - I think you can find a good quad band used for $50.
I would not buy from an individual, buy from a business. Lots of individuals don't even know what "unlocked" means. (It means you can use ANY SIM card from any carrier.)

So - buy an unlocked phone, or, temporarily borrow one from a friend. Just make sure it is unlocked and can work on the 900 and 1800 bands used overseas.
Buy a prepaid SIM when you hit France, another when in Italy. The only down side is that you will have to leave a msg on your home phone giving your overseas number.

Another alternative would be to get a Yackie card with a local U.S. number. Incoming calls would be only 24? in those two countries and people would have a local number to call. HOWEVER, Yackie is NOT quite yet ready for prime time.
They might be in a couple weeks. The system itself works perfectly - the support system (web site etc.) is just now getting into gear according to posts here.
IF users get the SIM cards they were promised were shipped today AND the support system is running smoothly - that's the best way to go.
Follow the Yackie thread here in the next couple weeks.

...mike

[KarenM]

Thank you for your responses. I didn't realize the site doesn't email me when one is made, so I'm a bit late in getting back to you. Believe it or not, I did do extensive research on this before writing here, so although I've never used a cell phone, I have a general idea of the issues involved.

After reading the thread noted above, and the responses, here I've decided to modify (hopefully simplify my "need list" as follows:

1. forget using the phone back here in California--complicates things too much

2. I'll only receive incoming calls from U.S. from one person--my housesitter--which will likely never exceed 5 minutes or so--only for emergencies.

3. calls within France, within Italy and what few I might make between countries, will not exceed 5 minutes

4. Voicemail messages can be left for me.

5. I prefer to not buy separate SIM cards--too much to keep track of--here, ease trumps pennies

With these ideas in mind, I though UM would be a decent choice, especially paired with CBW or Yackie. Will those who don't like that option please explain why? I like the idea of one phone number (for future trips), ease of renewal fees.

Since the OP is a "newbie", I wouldn't rec. UM. UM's service is NOT standard and would be diff. for a newbie to understand. Using UM would not be good because it can cost people who want to call her mucho dinero.

What about UM is difficult to understand?

Does anyone know if a Mobal $99 phone work with the UM card? Can it be purchased unlocked? (I don't want to call and ask them, since they make their $$ on their calling plans.)I am reluctant to do eBay for various reasons, and prefer a straightforward, clean purchase of something which works well, without "if" attached. I have no friends with GSM phones to borrow from.

Given my limited phone needs, in summary, I want to go with simple, easy and reliable--I don't have time to experiment with mistakes.

Further thoughts in view of this modified input?

Thanks so much,

Karen

[KarenM]

P.S. The reason I don't want to go the eBay route is that there are too many possibilities for not getting the right thing the first time. I just went there, and the numbers of offers are endless--too overwhelming for me. I'd rather pay $100 for something I know will work than $50 for something with a 40% chance of problems.

Hence, I'd really appreciate recs for phone purchase with that in mind. Then I can decide which service to go with.

Is Telestial considered not good here? (As far as the service issues go?)

Karen

[Bossman]

If you will be getting a phone here in the US via ebay or not, more likely than not it will have one or both of the US bands. Any triband phone will have at least one of the US bands. A quad-band will obviously have both US and europe bands. The V551/557/v330, V635 are all very good quadband phones that can be had for around $100 on eBay. I (and probably most folks here) bought my phones on eBay.


If you do not want to go the ebay route, you can try any of the other online shops. I googled for unlocked GSM phone see results below. From what I have read, Telestial is a good company. But they are just too expensive. Most of their items are at least double the price they are else where.

It's not that UM is that difficult, but unlike your conventional calling, UM uses a callback mechanism to connect/make calls. It's explained in other threads.

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navc...ocked+gsm+phone

[snidely]

Karen -
The trouble with UM is that it can cost anywhere from 35? to $1/min. to call a LIctenstein mobile (UM) number. You might want to check w. your LD carrier to see what the cost will be. It also uses callback for outging calls, but you sound intelligent enuf to follow the directions for doing that.
When I used UM a year ago, they didn't have functioning VM. I gather that's been fixed.

Telestial is a very reputable outfit. They do charge a lot for most SIM cards. The advantage is that you would know the number to give out before you leave. As for a phone itself maybe you can buy one from a reputable shop at home. You need to make sure it is unlocked - meaning it will accept a SIM from anyone.
If you buy it at a shop - you can test if it is unlocked by having them turn it on w. a Cingular SIM in it, and then a T-Mobile SIM.

Where are you located? If, by chance, you are in northern Ca., I'll give you a perfectly fine quad band Moto V330 in exchange for a check for $50 to your favorite charity. (As long as it isn't the NRA)

You realize you are a unique person - probably the only poster on this board w.o. a cel phone! (And probably the only person you know w.o. one as well.)


...mike

[MATHA531]

Do not buy from telestial...they are rip off artists...they triple the price of sim cards they sell and besides which you don't get a choice of carrier.

In addition, please note that with French sims, at least with Orange FR (I don't know which one they're pushing) you don't get your number anyway...you have to wait till you get to France to register and at that point you get the number. Not knowing the number in advance is no big deal, you can easily text it or e mail it to friends or make a quick call to tell them the number.

As far as united mobile, united mobile has always had functional voice mail; the previous poster had a problem with something they were doing but voice mail always worked. His problem with it has been fixed now so there is no need to go into what his complaint was.

He does make a good point about calling Liechtenstein numbers; although with a callbackworld account, you get something called a pin2dest for free. This is a US toll free number you can give your friends...the only thing is that it isn't your very own toll free number...when the toll free number answers they have to enter a pin # cbw assigns to you...no big deal...OTOH you can get a US toll free number which is your own for a charge of $1.50/month.....in this case no pin would be needed. In any event, if you are using united mobile, you would pay $0.14 US/minute
timed in 6 second intervals to reach you

French prepaids tend to be expensive...they can work with callbackworld too but the rate is far more than $0.14/minute and callers to it or to an Italian local prepaid would pay in the vicinity of $0.35/minute. Italian sims are pretty cheap for local calls....but united mobile isn't all that expensive for local calls if you use callbackworld....

What everybody is alluding to about the difficulty of united mobile is that it operate on a callback system...you dial a number say in the United States on United Mobile and what happens on most phones is you get a message call not alloweed. You hang up and seconds later you get a call back, you answer it and you will hear your nuimber ringing....united mobile to the United States through its naitive service charges $.49/minute with a $.35 set up fee for each call (note you can buy United Mobile sim cards directly on their web site in one of 3 different currencies, euro, us dollars and British pound sterling....the above are the US charges. Also calls directly on United Mobile are billed to the next highest minute, not rounded to the next highest tenth of a minute like callbackworld.

So that brings us to callbackworld...if you use a callbackworld account to call, what happens is they give you your very own US number...you dial it as above on united mobile...you get a message call not allowed, you hang up and wait for the callback...when this callback comes you will hear a US ringing tone...after 1 or 2 rings you hang up again, no charge by United Mobile as the call has not been completed.

A few seconds later, you get a second callback..you answer it and you will hear a female voice say, "Please enter phone number followed by the number sign key now"...and you do it...you don't press send...the call will go through. As long as you are in a United Mobile no charge zone, all of western, central and a good part of Eastern Europe, Australia, South Africa, China among others, you don't pay to United Mobile as you are receiving.....you pay callbackworld's rates which as noted are to the United States from a United Mobile phone, $0.14/minute raised to the nearest tenth of a minute (6 secons)..a bargain. Some people say the call quality is not all that good which is understandable as to achieve the cheap rates, the calls are probably routed through various discount carriers but that is really no different than using one of those cheap international calling cards which give lots of minuters for very little...calls are not of landline quality but they are good enough for most purposes. You have voice mail and it functions...to access voice mail from Europe you use callbackworld as above and when the female voice answers you dial your Liechtenstein number...callbackworld charges $0.20/minute for these Liechtenstein to Liechtenstein call and since you will be on the Liechtenstein phone, the call will go right into voice mail.

Sometimes for technical reasons your callbackworld callback (the 2nd one) instead of reaching you goes into voice mail..if you suddenly get a message you have calls in voice mail after trying callbackworld, you can ignore them...for the most part as long as the phone is on if you miss a call the phone will indicate a missed call and then you can go into voice mail.

Finally, getting an true world tri band unlocked phone in the USA has become a bit of a problem since T Mobile no longer provides to its customers (and the merchants on ebay) real world tri band phones....again for a variety of reasons (USA non conformity with world standards) the frequencies used in the United Staes on its gsm (the technology you will be using in Europe) are different than the rest of the world (except Canada of course, but then again the Canadian phone system is toally tied in with the US phone system as Canada is the only country in the world without its own country code, something that must bug many Canadians and several Latin American systems and then again Japan uses a technology all its own)..I know some people who have been burned big time by buying a tri band phone in the United States which turned out to be 850/1800/1900 and finding they bought the wrong sim card which has very little 1800 coverage or found that in some countries most of the gsm converage is on 900...so indeed you want a quad band phone and there are some really cheap ones available thruogh web sites.

The only real weakness of United Mobile right now is I have had trouble sending text messages from my T mobile phone to them...I don't know if this is garbage being pulled by T Mobile blocking the text messages (although I can send text message from United Mobile to T Mobile phones)....

Again, you can order a united mobile sim card directly from their web site at a much much better price than the rip off artists at telestial.

Finally, if you read through this forum, there is an exciting start up company called Yackie Mobile...but there have been some problems with distribution of their sim cards and some on this forum have been very upset bu this, understandibly so.

If Yackie mobile is able to get their act together, they may become the best alternative for Americans as you will then be able to use them in the United States as a prepaid account at rates not too much higher than the regular prepaids...but time will tell.

My suggestion is probably united mobile, a quad band gsm unlocked phone but goiong the direction of separate local sims for France and Italy wouldn't be the worst idea either.