Most dutch prepaid cards allow you to make calls when you’re abroad as well. However, as you’re using another providers network, it’s not cheap.
Depending on how many calls you plan to make (and obviously how long those calls will be) you may be better off getting different cards in different countries.

Expediteus,

Who is your cell phone carrier? I just switched from Verizon to T-Mobile mainly because T-Mobile has international rates for travelling and almost all of their phones are international phones. I didn’t get an unlocked phone but I do have an international one. From what the salesperson told me, the unlocked phones are useful if you will be picking up a plan abroad for a longer period of time, and you can use another carrier over there. With my international phone, I keep my local number and get charged .99-$1.99 for outgoing calls while abroad. I don’t have to deal with getting chips or cards and anything like that while I am moving around through different countries.

I hope I didn’t confuse you, I am just learning this stuff myself.

Happy travels

I can tell you that there are websites that sell you a deal for about $70 more than what it costs to do it yourself. Here’s what I did very successfully: From Samstores.com I bought an unlocked triband phone for $100. I landed in England and at the airport bought a pay-as-you-go SIM card for the phone for 10 GBP ($19 now). (Virgin Mobile). I saw the identical phone and "deal" costing $189 from a site in the USA. I had a fully operating phone number (incoming calls always free). While Virgin Mobile now allows pay-as-you-go usage outside of UK, it is costly away from the UK. So, find a similar deal for SIM + prepaid time in each country you visit. (e.g., Ireland seems to have one that costs about 30 Euro, Meteor Mobile). Of course, your phone number changes from country to country, so for the sake of USA callers, I signed up for "Follow Me 800", a $1.00 per month service that gives me a toll-free number in the USA, and I can set the number, via computer, to forward callers to any telephone number in the world I want. You wind up paying then about 10 cents per minute for calls that come thorugh. So while I used this service only while I was in England, in theory I could have also bought a SIM card in another country and then set the Follow Me number to my new telephone number.

Finally, there is a service, "HopAbroad", retailed in the US by way of Telestial.com, that will provide a Monaco-based phone number that will ring you anywhere in the world. At about $1.00 per minute for typical usage, and with a caller from anywhere always dialing internationally to reach you, I question the value here except for business travellers not wanting to think through cheaper alternatives.

Holy crap that sounds like such a better deal than what I have!!

thanks so much for the info….this whole sim card thing is a bit confusing for me. So do I have to buy a new sim card in each country I go to? or is there just one I can buy?

lets say you buy a sim card in the first country you visit, they usually run 10-20 euros with maybe 5-10 euros of credit included. it should work in all the places you’re going but the rates are much higher when you are "roaming" outside the provider’s home country. so if you’re going to be staying somewhere else for a while and making lots of calls, you’ll be better off buying a new sim card for that country. but if you’re just passing through and making a couple calls it wouldn’t be worth it, especially as you might have leftover credit to burn anyways.

as for international calls, they will be pretty expensive by cell phone no matter where you are, so unless you’re burning unused credit, you’re better off getting a phone card and using a pay phone.

also be sure to double check that your phone is actually compatible with european networks as they use different frequencies.

Go on google and search for a sim card called: Riiing (yes 3 i’s)

It allows you to roam all over Europe. Relatively low per minute charges to call back to home….but the best feature is free incoming calls. Your mobile number is based in Leichtenstein. I found rates for my folks to call me from the US to Europe for 14 cents a minute and it doesn’t cost me a cent.

The card was about $30 on ebay and included 5 euros of calls on it.

O wow, thanks rapps. And basically thats what I was wanting it for, so that people here in the states would be able to find me with all of our hopping all over Europe. thanks so much for the info! and where did you go to find 14cents per min calls from the US to Europe?

I don’t have it on me now…but a quick search gave me this one for 16 cents

http://www.icallabro…

Here is info on Riiing:

http://www.riiing.co…

also, I currently have a sprint phone and I know that wont work with a SIM card. So what kind of phone do I need to look at. Some websites have said a GSM dual band will work, others say a tri band phone is necessary. Could someone help me on what frequencies the phone I buy needs to have?

Best to have 900,1800, and 1900. No need for 850 as its only used in the US.

Ok, here’s how it breaks down… to have an american phone work in Europe, it needs to be an unblocked, tri-band phone. If you are nice enough to your carrier (mine’s cingular) they might give you the unlock code. Or, there are dodgy places that will unblock it for you for free or a small fee. It is easier to just get an unblocked phone from e-bay or mobilebee. Sprint works on a PCS (i.e not GSM) network, so the boring gray sprint flip-phones everyone has will not work in Europe Cingular and Tmobile have international rates, but those can add up. I just bought a SIM through Orange in France (about 25€)
and just put minutes on it with the mobicard (for 5, 10 and 20€) You can get those at any FNAC,tabac and epicerie in France, pretty much. I got a French number (+336 and so on) calls WILL take up most of your mobicard minutes. But you can send a TON of textos (SMS) with absolutely no problem. And if people call you, it is at no charge to you, so chat away. You can also bip – ring whoever you want to talk to and hang up so they know to ring you, if you wanna save money. In Spain we bip (hacer una perdida) to say "thinking of you" as oppposed to "I’m a stingy bastard" Orange roamed in UK, Lux, Germany and Holland with no prob. I sent a ton of textos and the charges didn’t seem to add up to much on my 10€ mobicard. Hope this helps!

thanks so much for the help. I have one more question. I see that I need a triband phone. Some companies call a triband phone 850/1800/1900, while some say 900/1800/1900. On an earlier post it said that a 850 will only work in the States…..so does this mean that a 850/1800/1900 phone won’t work in Europe? I am having a hard time finding a 900/1800/1900 phone on ebay.

Expediteus,
The bands most used abroad are 900 and 1800. The US has 1900 BUT, 850 is growing fairly quickly, mainly in the areas that are less densely populated. That said, I would recommend buying a "Quad band" phone, that has all four bands. They are plentiful on eBay. I bought one in May, and intend to use it as my backup phone in the US when I get back from my trip to Spain. As it also has the 850 band I can be sure that I will be able to use it for a few years in the US. With a quad-band you can be sure that it will work everywhere. (They are often referred to as "world phone".)
SM