Multi-city Europe trip cell questions

Status
Not open for further replies.

Pandamonium

Golden Member
Aug 19, 2001
1,628
0
76
Did some googling, searched AT already.

Going on a ~2.5wk trip to Rome, London, and Stockholm. Have iPhones with AT&T. I'm in the process of getting them unlocked.

AFAIK, my best bet is to get a SIM card after we land. I'm wondering:

1) Will a SIM card in Rome allow me to use our phone in London and Stockholm as well, or do I need to buy a new SIM card for each country?
2) Ideally I'd like to be able to receive phone calls going to my US number. Is there a cost-efficient way to forward calls made to my domestic number to a temporary international number? (Without porting my number to google voice)

If anyone's got better ideas, I'm all ears.
 

crashtestdummy

Platinum Member
Feb 18, 2010
2,893
0
0
Honestly, for what you're trying to do, the best bet may just be to bite the bullet on roaming charges.

I don't think (though I may be wrong) there is a service that will work across all three countries.

How much time do you plan to spend making calls?
 

NutBucket

Lifer
Aug 30, 2000
27,053
571
126
Can you just setup call forwarding on your US number? Uses airtime but that shouldn't be an issue.
 

Pandamonium

Golden Member
Aug 19, 2001
1,628
0
76
Probably not more than 20-30 minutes making calls. But the calls that we anticipate have to do with buying a house, so we want to be able to communicate efficiently.
 

randomrogue

Diamond Member
Jan 15, 2011
5,449
0
0
Did some googling, searched AT already.

Going on a ~2.5wk trip to Rome, London, and Stockholm. Have iPhones with AT&T. I'm in the process of getting them unlocked.

AFAIK, my best bet is to get a SIM card after we land. I'm wondering:

1) Will a SIM card in Rome allow me to use our phone in London and Stockholm as well, or do I need to buy a new SIM card for each country?
2) Ideally I'd like to be able to receive phone calls going to my US number. Is there a cost-efficient way to forward calls made to my domestic number to a temporary international number? (Without porting my number to google voice)

If anyone's got better ideas, I'm all ears.

I was just in Stockholm and got a free simcard at the hotel. That was kinda nice. I'm almost dead positive you'll need a new simcard for each country. The roaming charges are the thing to watch out for. My local simcard literally started bothering me from the plane (welcome to XZY country your charges will be $4,000,000 per minute, etc).

Depending on how much you're going to call and your data usage you might want to just call ATT and tell them you're traveling. I think they have a plan that's relatively affordable for overseas travel. Personally I went the route of just swapping the sim card and adding $15 to my phone but I live in Europe and use pay as you go regularly so this made more sense to me for my uses. You should be prepared for some decent data usage though since you'll probably be using the net to find metro schedules and be using GPS to figure your way around to hotels, restaurants, and so on.
 

GTaudiophile

Lifer
Oct 24, 2000
29,767
32
81
Either buy a different SIM for each country or bite the bullet on the roaming charges. There is no pan-European plan that I know of.

For outgoing calls, the best option might be to use GrooveIP with a US GV number to make free calls to the US over WiFi. If you have a European number/SIM chip then incoming calls are free. This is why I travel with two phones: my Galaxy Nexus is set to operate on 2G networks only (Data roaming and 3G turned off) but I mainly use its WiFi for calling to the States or the WhatsApp app for texting to the States. My Nokia dumb phone then contains the foreign SIM chip for free incoming or local calls.
 
Last edited:

randomrogue

Diamond Member
Jan 15, 2011
5,449
0
0
Keep in mind that data rates in Europe are pretty high so you could simply use Skype from the hotel. Odds are your hotels will have free wifi. If you're planning on receiving calls at any given moment though see above.
 

andylawcc

Lifer
Mar 9, 2000
18,183
3
81
i dunno if this will help, but i was in London 2 months ago and bought a pre-paid 30 days all you can use Data/Voice/SMS for 15 pounds (almost all service provider are doing the same deal). bloody excellent.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.