Assumptions and questions from a complete dummy

[rfranzq]

Originally Posted by 25jive1

I've never traveled abroad with a cell phone.
I bought 2 Samsungs with Tru SIMs off ebay for an upcoming trip to Europe.
I know nothing about international dialing except you must use a country code when calling. I assume I need to put in country codes in when loading my contact for calling back home.
I plan to activate the SIMs with local (Missouri USA) numbers. I won't be making many calls so price per minute is not terribly important.

When I'm calling my wife at her USA number even tho she's close by but we're both in another country do I dial the USA country code?

If I make a local call while abroad do I dial the country code even if its just down the street?

Be gentle, thanks

Yes. Yes. You know me. As you know I am also using Tru. You will have US number. You will be calling US numbers in the US and elsewhere. I just tested calling a US cell phone [not Tru]. xxx-yyy-zzzz, 1xxx-yyy-zzzz, and +1xxx-yyy-zzzz all work. I would suggest when you program your contacts for the Tru SIM you use the +1xxx-yyy-zzzz format. This should work whether you are in the US or not. And does not need to be reprogrammed once you do it.

Country code: in the US '1' is the country code [also Canada].

In the UK '44' is the country code.
The US use of 1 before US long distance calls is not used to my knowledge anywhere else.

Outbound international call codes. threre are many. You probably do not even know what it is for the US to dial an international number from a land line phone. I don't off the top of my head. The good news is you do not need to know. The '+' at the start of the number is the international 'code' for outbound calls recognied by any GSM system to tell them to use their countries code followed by the number.

Wherever you are outside the US [and I encourage you to use it in the US] you will dial +cc wwwwwpppppp [arbitrary letters to indicate phone numbers.

The next sentence I believe is true and I expect people in Europe to clarify it for us. This is a kind of exception. Many phone numbers in Europe, for instance when calling in country have a number like this: 0wwwwwppppp. With a leading 0. Let us say the number is for the UK. To call it with a non-UK phone you would dial +44wwwwwppppp . You drop the zero to make the call.

If you metion what countries you will be going to we can give you the country codes for them.