River Cruise... need help with phone!

[snaimon]

Originally Posted by Phil_in_CA

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