Getting a cell phone for use in Europe

On 10/2/07, Hank Harken <hharken2cox.net> wrote:

> I had use of the phone for almost two weeks and even added more funds to
> the account at a Nokia store in another city. However my German friend
> received paperwork in the mail stating that he could not give the phone
> to a non-resident of Germany. Though I didn't see the communication,
> either the contractual information or legalities made him concerned
> enough to ask me for the cell phone.
>
> A separate inquiry at another Frankfurt store indicated they wanted a
> German address and bank account to start a phone subscription.
>
> My original plan was to have an active, fully-charged phone and an
> inexpensive phone account ready upon arrival for use on future trips to
> Germany but it seems recent security concerns may have made that
> impossible to do.
>
> So, what am I missing ?

Hello Hank,

I can't definitively say the same is true in Germany, but I know here
in France the law is that you must have a visa allowing you to stay in
the country for at least a year if you want to open a subscription
plan, but anyone can open a pre-paid cell account. You do need to do
it in your own name though to be fully legal, but just presenting your
passport and paying the fee will get you the prepaid pack.

Christopher Appell
Plone Consultants, Inc.

On Oct 4, 2007, at 1:49 PM, Christophe Appell wrote:

> I can't definitively say the same is true in Germany, but I know here
> in France the law is that you must have a visa allowing you to stay in
> the country for at least a year if you want to open a subscription
> plan, but anyone can open a pre-paid cell account. You do need to do
> it in your own name though to be fully legal, but just presenting your
> passport and paying the fee will get you the prepaid pack.

No one has ever asked me for ID when getting a phone subscription in
France (where I live). I don't know where you got your info...


Kirk

Hank

I bought a SIM-unlocked phone in Austria and I have been able to buy SIM cards with pay-as-you-go plans from all of the major carriers there. In Austria, you do not need any identification at all.

I also bought a SIM card in Italy that works in the phone, but in Italy they actually scanned my passport before they would sell me the SIM card.

A friend of mine borrowed the phone and bought a SIM card for it in France. He did not report any problems.

It is *way* cheaper to have several SIM cards and swap them when you are in the home country. Also, inbound calls to European cell phones are free, so gettting people to call you from out of country makes them very affordable.

Neil

Christopher Appell cheerfully contributed...

>I can't definitively say the same is true in Germany, but I know here
>in France the law is that you must have a visa allowing you to stay in
>the country for at least a year if you want to open a subscription
>plan, but anyone can open a pre-paid cell account. You do need to do
>it in your own name though to be fully legal, but just presenting your
>passport and paying the fee will get you the prepaid pack.

It's nice to know a prepaid phone would be possible in France. It's
possible that either my Frankfurt friend or I misunderstood the
situation but it looks as if I'm out of luck for using one in Germany as
a nonresident.

- Hank

At 2:58 PM -0700 2007/10/02, Hank Harken wrote:
>My original plan was to have an active, fully-charged phone and an
>inexpensive phone account ready upon arrival for use on future trips to
>Germany but it seems recent security concerns may have made that
>impossible to do.


When I travelled on business to the UK for several weeks in 2005, I
got a cell phone, the correct SIM card, and prepaid phone service
plan from this company before I left:
<http://www.cellularabroad.com/>

You buy the phone, SIM card, and the prepaid plan. Then you have a
choice. You can keep the phone permanently and keep putting more
money in the prepaid account as you need it, or you can use it for a
specified period of time, and at the end of that time they buy the
phone back from you (they call it a rental, but it was really a
purchase/repurchase deal).

It worked exactly as advertised, and it cost much less overall than
the extra $3.00 per minute my regular cell phone company wanted to
charge me for international calls on my own phone. My husband also
dealt with them for a two-week trip to France and the UK in 2006. No
problems at all, either time.

--
K
Kat Nagel

.

Arthur Fromer’s Budget Magazine included an article on mobalrental.com It is a British outfit with a New York City number for easy contact. They charge $1.25 within Europe and $1.50 Europe to US per minute. You can own the Nokia phone and the charges are to your credit card as you go. You can be charged for incoming calls—but; as competition is becoming keener, they may no longer charge for incoming calls. I have no problem with them as long as I make a call without a six-month gap. I have used them while in France, Italy, Greece, and even (on an emergency) within the US. At this point in time, I am waiting to see what the “word” will be with a European bought iPhone.

If you have an AT&T (formerly Cingular) or T-Mobile (I think) GMS phone, you can use it in Europe, if you get it unlocked. You can get it unlocked for $15-30. Do a google search for places that will do it. If you've fulfilled your 2-year or whatever contract, or are close to fulfilling it, AT&T or T-Mobile might do it for you for free. I sent my Motorola V600 off for unlocking (see www.thetravelinsider.info), and had it back in a few days. Then you can buy a pre-paid SIM card in whatever country you're in, and not have to buy a new phone. This works great. And much cheaper than buying a new phone. Plus you have your own phone, all your contacts, you know how to use it, etc.

The SIM cards can be bought all over, and can be refilled all over too. Magazine stands, gas stations, etc. all carry them. Generally the more you prepay at once, the more "free" stuff you get: extra minutes, free texting, etc.

An added advantage in Europe is that incoming calls are free. So your contacts in America can call you at no cost to you.

Maybe this will help:

My son went through this exercise for a 6-week internship in Germany this last summer. With our own research and some input from friends in Germany we came to this solution:

I gave him an unlocked Sony-Ericsson T630 that I had bought on eBay a couple years earlier. Any GSM phone will do, but you have to watch out that it is either quad band or the non-US version of tri-band (i.e. 900, 1800 and 1900 MHz rather than 850, 1800 and 1900 MHz). This means older Cingular or AT&T phones will not work or will work poorly! T-Mobile US phones may or may not work (they don't use the 850 band in the US). For example, my quad band Treo 680 works fine here in the US and in Europe. I just checked and the option below uses 900/1800 MHz, so a European dual-band will also work.

Once my son was in Germany he went to an Aldi store and bought an "Aldi Talk Starter Set" for €15 which is a prepaid SIM card, activation kit and €10 starting credit. He speaks German, but I don't think any form of ID was needed. He replenished the account with an "Aldi Talk Guthaben Karte" which sell for €15 and €30. The rate is €0.14/min for most calls within Germany.

He had no problems with that. If I remember correctly incoming calls were not free with this plan, but calls from abroad are charged the same rate. We had my son call us and we called him back to save him the expensive overseas call.

Aldi stores are popular discount stores and every town over a few 1000 people has one. There is a web site <http://www.aldi-sued.de/de/html/service/5613.htm> but it is in German. Watch out, it rings at you ;-)

This was a great option for a college student. Your mileage may vary.

Keep in mind that the "free incoming calls" in Europe are being paid by the caller such that the rates to call mobile numbers are higher than to landlines ("Festnetz"). This is true even with many long distance providers in the US. It is still much cheaper than calling from the mobile phone to the US.

Hope this is useful!

Klaus

Should also mention that with most overseas SIM cards you can set your account to English for things like voicemail and calls to the provider (to check your account balance for example). It's probably easiest to do this in a phone store when you buy the SIM card.

Also, you can generally recharge your SIM card directly over your phone using a credit card. The SIM card will come with a number of pre-programmed telephone numbers such as customer service. One of these is the number for checking your balance and recharging the account.

> > I can't definitively say the same is true in Germany, but I know here
> > in France the law is that you must have a visa allowing you to
stay in
> > the country for at least a year if you want to open a subscription
> > plan, but anyone can open a pre-paid cell account. You do need to do
> > it in your own name though to be fully legal, but just presenting
your
> > passport and paying the fee will get you the prepaid pack.
>
> No one has ever asked me for ID when getting a phone subscription in
> France (where I live). I don't know where you got your info...

We leave for two weeks in Italy on Friday, and today I signed up for
AT&T's international "world traveler" plan for my new, one-week old
iPhone. Cell phone only, no data. I'll rely on my laptop for data
and Email. Too many horror stories about thousand-dollar bills and
AT&Ts data plans are still fairly expensive.

AT&T put me through a ringer of questioning before setting up the
account, such as asking me where I'd worked in 1996, what my address
once was here in Orange County, and so on. I spent 20 minutes on the
phone going through the whole process.

The plan is $5.99 US per month and $0.99 (99-cents) US per minute
both directions. Text messages are included and cost 50-cents to
send, 15-cents to receive.

One nice thing about the plan is that clients/friends who might not
know I'm in Europe can call me on my regular, Orange County number.

This has to be a better deal that hotel international rates. I
recall once some years ago my then lady friend running up a $100 or
so bill for a single call home. In 1999 I rented an international
phone and the total cost was over $200 for two weeks. Don't use
these to call for restaurant reservations. Local calls from a hotel
aren't bad.

Dave

Hank Harken wrote:
> I just returned from Germany last night. I hope jet lag doesn't affect
> the clarity of this note...
>

> I had use of the phone for almost two weeks and even added more funds to
> the account at a Nokia store in another city. However my German friend
> received paperwork in the mail stating that he could not give the phone
> to a non-resident of Germany. Though I didn't see the communication,
> either the contractual information or legalities made him concerned
> enough to ask me for the cell phone.
>
> A separate inquiry at another Frankfurt store indicated they wanted a
> German address and bank account to start a phone subscription.
>
> My original plan was to have an active, fully-charged phone and an
> inexpensive phone account ready upon arrival for use on future trips to
> Germany but it seems recent security concerns may have made that
> impossible to do.
>
> So, what am I missing ?

As my German mother-in-law will tell you, (paraphrasing)

"Those Germans do like their rules. And they have plenty to prove the point."

David

On Oct 12, 2007, at 8:13 AM, David Clark wrote:

>
> The plan is $5.99 US per month and $0.99 (99-cents) US per minute
> both directions. Text messages are included and cost 50-cents to
> send, 15-cents to receive.
>
> One nice thing about the plan is that clients/friends who might not
> know I'm in Europe can call me on my regular, Orange County number.

Dave and others might want to consider turning off voice mail while
traveling. Voice mail bills you double: once when the message is
left, once when it is heard. If clients/friends don't know you're
traveling, they can run up your bill pretty fast.

---Tim Archer

Too many horror stories about thousand-dollar bills and
> AT&Ts data plans are still fairly expensive.

And watch the ATMs, Dave. Twice we were caught, in cities north of Rome, by
bank teller machines which debited cash from our bank account, without
putting out! Any time you have to use an ATM, it's worth photographing the
bank... and recording the address, even if the paper slip says nothing was
debited. We lost several days (and around $A1500.00!) before we switched to
cash only in our money belts. We'd never have realised (and would have lost
the lot) if Jan hadn't monitored our accounts online.

Paul,
W.Australia
We were also charged A$2,750.00 for a Chinese takeaway meal debited to our
Visa account, in northern Holland, near Leeuwarden. That has to be some
kind of record, I guess... and it took sixty days to sort out!

In Germany, I recommend Ortel Mobile, which offers international calls at very good rates - EU 0.09/min direct dialed from Germany to the US, for example. Their webpage is available in english, and offers addresses to local stores where you can buy a SIM card.

<http://www.ortelmobile.de/>

Getting an unlocked phone and local prepaid SIMs in each country you travel to is the most economical way to call in foreign countries. You don't have any contract - so there are no legality issues or credit checks or local bank accounts or anything required.

Step-by-step logistics guide:

1. Buy a SIM-unlocked phone before leaving the US. You can get used and new ones on ebay, but I recommend tigerdirect, where you'll be sure to know what you're getting. Since you're not getting into a contract, you have to pay full retail for the phone, but they currently have a basic Motorola model as low as $39.95, or a RAZR for $139.95.

2. Buy a local SIM in the country you're traveling to. Many countries have one or two carriers which offer very reasonable international rates, like Ortel in Germany. The SIM will come in a packet, often with English instructions, for around $15, including ~$10 of talk time.

3. Insert the SIM in the phone and follow the instructions to register/activate the SIM.

4. Call away!

5. Refill the SIM with prepaid cards in the local country, or sometimes, online. For Ortel, you can buy a recharge card at the stores listed on their website - but also note that Ortel uses the E-Plus network, and any E-Plus recharge card, which are ubiquitous, can also be used to refill the phone.

If you travel internationally a lot, you'll soon find that you have a collection of SIM cards for countries around the world. Note that most prepaid SIM cards expire if you go 6mo (or some as little as 3mo) without adding credit to them. So don't overfill them just to let them expire.

Since I travel a lot for work, but I like my friends and family to be able to call me while I'm traveling, I set up a toll-free number that can be forwarded to any number worldwide. This way, they can call direct to my cell, without incurring expensive international-dialing rates that US cell providers charge. Kall8 seems to have the most powerful and flexible service and also reasonable international rates.

<http://tinyurl.com/ysrpxx>

Enjoy Germany!

I want to thank folks for all the ideas on using cell phones and cell
phone plans in Europe. Every time I wanted to write this note of thanks
it seems someone had another contribution.

At this time the idea of one phone and multiple SIMs seems to be the
most useful to me though I haven't completely examined the advantages of
working with one of the "rental" outfits. Leaving for Europe with a
global plan with ATT might be the suspenders to go with my belt (so to speak).

Ortel seems to be a good choice in Germany for SIMs and plans.

I was wondering if people had recommendations for companies and plans in
other European countries. Though my current plans involve Germany,
Italy, France and Spain, my 2008 travel could also take me almost
anywhere else.

- Hank