<p>I will add to the chorus of voices saying to wait until you know which college you're dealing with.</p>
<p>At my daughter's college, the coverage by one cell phone provider -- Verizon -- is far superior to all others. But there are other college communities where a different provider might be better.</p>
<p>here on the east coast verizon is i think the best way to go. also sign up online for a SKYPE account this will allow u to talk and see your son for free. I have a daughter who lives in Japan and we skype each other everyday. Just google skype. I think u will be very pleased with this service I am</p>
<p>OH MY!! Even if I took the cost of my son's phone ( which we bought) and divided it, we would come to no where near $55 a month! Our prepaid here in mideast is about .04/ text message and all incoming calls and texts are free... This will be an eyeopening experience. Just another reason to ask questions on CC... So do you HAVE to take their phone? Is there any possibility that it would be less expensive to buy the phone ( here ) and get a SIM card from the carrier? or is that just not an option?</p>
<p>This is probably a loaded question: but I wonder what other regular/daily expenses I am overlooking or just not aware of??</p>
<p>thanks again for the great info and advice!
In anticipation of the probably verizon, I will just look through their site, and his 'likely' school sites.</p>
<p>Well, Skype is definitely worth it, and a great way to keep in touch, but you will probably be like me and feel better if the kid has a cell phone in his pocket when he is in college on the other side of the world and traveling around the world to visit you. Ironically, we have S signed up for global roaming, in case he misses a connection in Korea or Tokyo. Guess which two countries in Asia are not covered by his plan....</p>
<p>In California, yes, we had to take their phone. I looked into switching to Sprint, and would have had to lay out another 200-300 dollars for THEIR phone (same make and model!). So we didn't change. </p>
<p>ATT did have a prepaid sim card that will fit in your own phone, but it was only usable in the U.S. You could have prepaid there, and have him switch phone cards when he is changing countries. I didn't want him to have the hassle. Maybe other providers will allow global roaming on a prepaid card.</p>
<p>Other than the phone, getting the kid outfitted for cold weather, and dorm room stuff, the only big costs were plane tickets. Not just the tickets for us to go visit him and vice versa, but he is at a small college that closes the dorms for breaks and thanksgiving. (You can pay extra to stay in the dorms during break, but the cafeteria is closed.) We have flown him to visit family during the breaks. Other than that, he doesn't spend much money. </p>
<p>Anyway, better to ask a lot of questions early in the summer before you sign on the dotted line. Some of them were unanswerable in the shop, and I spent a lot of time talking on the phone to the international experts (who, of course were not available 24/7). </p>
<p>Oh, also, we got him an account with the bank that had the only ATM on campus, thinking to save on user charges. Well, wouldn't you know that during WOW week, another bank's representative was on campus and said there is no fee to use that ATM with their card. Frustrating, as it was a bank that we have several accouts with already. Again, we had asked someone in the bookstore and they told us the only bank to use was _____. </p>
<p>Erroneous info, again... Kind of a trend in our 'getting S launched' adventure.</p>
<p>I use a US sim card in my phone when I go home in the summer. I have an unlocked Motorola Razr that works in China with my SIM card here and then every summer I just buy one on ebay for $5 and use it while I am there. I use the Cingular go phone pre-paid. It's good for those times when you need a phone but would be way too expensive for every day use as it's between .10 and .25 per minute depending on which plan you choose. But it works for the 4-6 weeks that I am home in the summer.</p>
<p>As for skype - we tried it and the quality is so poor here in China that we gave up - lag time is just too long to have a good conversation. I even purchased a hand phone with a usb connector to plug in to d's computer for more private conversations but that was a waste of money.</p>
<p>I actually use google talk to talk with relatives in the states, and it works quite well, as long as you have good internet connection. It doesn' call to regular phones like skype does, but it's free, so there's an upside.
I also use a to go phone during the summers. Needed to have a quad ban phone to be able to get good reception here at home, and also travelling in the states.</p>
<p>We are in the US, and we have Sprint, which has had excellent coverage both west coast, where we are, and east coast, where D attends college. She piggybacks on our family plan for $10/mo. We purchased a separate simcard compatible phone for about $100 that works in Europe. You have to call Sprint and activate it, and then they only charge for the minutes used. It worked well for both her study abroad in Greece, and then a conference in Prague she attended last summer. It was programmed with her Sprint cel phone number, so her calls were automatically forwarded. The quality of the calls was excellent-sounded like she was next door. When she came home, all she had to do was turn on her regular Sprint phone, and turn off the other one. The minutes to/from overseas are not included in the regular monthly plan, so we kept conversations short, but at least we knew she got there safe, and she was able to co-ordinate with the other students over there. Don't know if that helps, but we've very happy with both the coverage and quality of Sprint.</p>
<p>We live in the US, but my brother lives in China and ds spent part of last year there. He was in Shanghai and Skype worked great there. One of the most useful things for us was SkypeOut. We could get on the computer and call his cell phone in China on Skype and pay about 1-2 cents a minute. Very cheap way to have those long talks.</p>
<p>We also found out that our US cell carrier had an Asia discount plan - we could pay I think $2-3 per month and calls to Asia from the US were 10-17cents a minute compared to $1 a minute without it.</p>
<p>Son doesn't use very many cell phone minutes, he doesn't text message either. Thank goodness there is no extra charge for computer messages, though! Our son has had trouble in a brick dorm on/in a hillside. We had trouble in our hometown with our brick house in a cul de sac with high hills surrounding us- getting an easy upgrade via phone helped us dramatically. Verizon does make changes so check with them if that is your carrier and you have trouble. No carrier will guarantee coverage in all buildings, definitely know where you will be next fall. The quality of the cell phone can make a diference, also- I have poorer reception than H or son- I got the freebie.</p>