Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Cheap calls in Europe on your cell phone

When we go to Europe or when any of my friends go to Europe, we always have the conversation before the trip - "so what are you going to do about phone calls?" Everyone knows that phone calls using your US carrier are ridiculously expensive and not everyone knows what to do about it. When I go to any country in Europe or South America, I always bring my T-Mobile (that's important) cell phone with me. When I arrive in the country, I go to a phone store and buy a SIM card for about 20 euros. This SIM card gives me a local phone number in the country and lets me make cell calls locally to my friends and family at low low rates -- no roaming. I also get to make phone calls back to the US at the local long distance rates -- wildly cheaper than the US cell phone roaming rates.
So what's the catch -- no catch - if you have a phone with a SIM card. All T-mobile phones have a SIM card - this has all of your contact information, your phone number and other billing info on it so that if you buy a new phone you just swap in your sim card and you are ready to go. In Europe and South America all of the phones are like this. In this US only T-mobile and maybe one other carrier uses SIM cards.
So, if you have T-mobile, call 611 from your cell and tell the representative to unlock your phone.
They will send you an email with instructions 3 days later - so make sure you allow time before your trip to do this. By the way once you do this on one phone you never have to unlock it again.
After you get your instructions, just follow them and your phone is unlocked.
Now when you go to Europe, just buy a SIM card and you are ready to rock and roll. When you put in your new SIM card - you will be asked for a password - this comes with the package for the new SIM card - do not lose this password.
The video will show you how to make the call to unlock, and how to install and remove your sim card.

No comments: