<p>I know that there was a detailed discussion of overseas cell phone experiences some time ago on the board but I haven't been able to find it. :-(</p>
<p>My daughter is leaving for a semester in Paris and will return in June. Her current plan is to buy a cell phone once she is overseas. She will be living with a mother and daughter in a private residence. Should I send her with some phone cards to work off of for her calls to the USA?</p>
<p>Any information would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.</p>
<p>When I was overseas I packed a phone card with 300 minutes on it for a three week trip. It ended up not being enough, but what I found was that they sell international calling cards over there for really cheap. I got one with 500 minutes on it for 5 euros. It worked perfectly, and I still have tons left on it.</p>
<p>If you get a tri/quad band GSM phone (Tmobile and Cingular sell some, or you can buy one from any number of internet sites), you can just get a prepaid SIM that has a european number. While international calls from a cell phone will still be costly, it will be MUCH cheaper than international roaming on a cell phone (which can range up to $1/minute +) and will enable her to have comparitively low cost calls within France.</p>
<p>I agree with the suggestions of buying a prepaid SIM card. They are really good deals. You can even buy a really cheap mobile phone to use. </p>
<p>As for calling the US. Is she bringing a computer with her? Have you tried Skype (VOIP). Computer to computer calling is free. If a computer with high speed internet is available there that would be very possible. It's what I use to keep in touch with my family far who live far away.</p>
<p>I'd like to verify scarletleavy's suggestion of using the Skype program. My daughter just returned from spending a semester in Rome and this saved us a HUGE amount of money! Originally she had planned on buying her cell phone over in Europe...but she and her boyfriend found out about the Skype program and he downloaded it onto his computer, bought a cheap headset and it worked great.</p>
<p>We downloaded it also and bought the minimum amount of 10 euro and didn't come close to using it all up. Calling Italy was about 2 cents a minute in American dollars. My daughter chose not to take her laptop, so we just called her room on set nights that we knew she was in. But if your child has Skype on a computer over there, then Skype to Skype is free. We also did conference calls w/ other family members so they could talk to her. </p>
<p>She ended up not buying a cell phone. Smartest thing we ever did. Highly recommend.</p>
<p>Be careful buying a cell phone. You'll need to get an unlocked phone which can use SIMs from any provider. If you buy from Cingular or T-Mobile, they only sell phones that are locked to use only their SIMs.</p>
<p>We found that a mixture of a cell phone an phone cards worked well for our daughter. The cell allowed for text messages which worked well b/c her email access was limited and allowed us to leave her voice messages. The best thing about the cell is that incomming calls don't count towards the minutes count althougth there was a small surcharge from our phone company to call a euro cell phone.</p>
<p>It also depends on how the phone will be used. My daughter had a cell phone (international, tri-band GSM with Cingular service) in Russia, but NEVER used it for calls locally to her host family & friends; if she needed to make a local call she used the phone in her house. She simply did not know enough people, nor were her language skills good enough, to spend much time talking on the phone locally. </p>
<p>Other than emergencies, if I wanted to call her, I used a prepaid phone card to call her house as well, at around 3 cents/minute. So she didn't need a Russian SIM card. She used the phone primarily for text-messaging back and forth to people in the states -- there was no extra charge for international text messaging. Text-messaging can be linked to AOL instant messaging or to email - so it is very efficient and inexpensive to communicate back and forth by text message. </p>
<p>I also had a triband phone with me, with my US service, traveling in France the same year and I used the phone for a few very short calls in France -- such as calling my hotel to verify reservations, etc. Even with international roaming charges, I did not end up with a very large bill -- overall I probably paid less than I would have to buy a European SIM card - so it really depends on intended use. </p>
<p>If you have Cingular service, I know that the people at the Cingular store will unlock your phone for you if you need it for traveling abroad -- at least they offered to do it for my daughter when she bought her new phone. At the times that we were abroad before, we were using unlocked phones that we purchased from eBay - generally it cost about $75 to get a good, recent model phone that way.</p>
<p>Also, for France it is worthwhile to buy a phone charger with a plug for a European outlet. The outlets in my hotel were blocked in a way that meant that I couldn't use my power converter along with my regular charger, so I did have to buy a new charger in France. It was no problem at all finding a store to sell the equipment in Paris... but it was about $25 extra I hadn't planned on spending.</p>
<p>Thanks so much for the responses. I am printing everything out to pass on to my daughter.</p>
<p>We definitely are going to explore Skype. We both have iChat on our computers and have spoken to one another regularly using it but I get the impression that Skype can be used to make bona fide phone calls. She has friends that she will want to stay in touch with all over the world so Skype sounds like the way to go.</p>
<p>Unfortunately she will not have internet access at her home stay but she will be walking distance from Reid Hall (Columbia's academic center in Paris) which has an internet connected computer center. I am sure that there are internet cafes in the neighborhood as well. My biggest concern is getting a call through to her or her being able to call us in an emergency.</p>
<p>My daughter didn't have internet access in Russia - except for an internet cafe that she visited once a week. That's why it was so cool for her when her friends back home figured out that the AOL instant messaging could connect to the text messaging -- so she would be texting with her phone, but here at home we would be using the IM. </p>
<p>More recently I discovered that you can send email directly to the cell phones - at least with the Cingular plan - and the text reply comes right back to email. </p>
<p>So basically a cell phone gives you IM and email even when there is no internet access. The only thing to watch out for is that while the individual messages are very inexpensive - a few cents per message can really add up when there are 3000 of them.</p>
<p>I don't know what kind of use you're expecting the cell phone to get or if your D currently has a cell phone. However, on a recent European trip we used our home Cingular phones without incident--even with the same WA phone number (you dial +1 before the number to call within Europe). The catch was the cost, of $1/minute. Since we used a grand total of 6 minutes on my phone in a three week trip, that didn't bother me (when the housesitter called to say the hamster had died). My husband used 22 minutes (business, you know).</p>