I was in London and Paris last month and I got my bill this month. Number one...I did not use my cell that much over there...maybe five, six times....and number two the bill is OUTRAGEOUS!!!

For every phone call I received or I placed I got charged twice. Once to King of Prussia PA...and another for international roaming. I can tell because the time stamps are paired up.

Is this normal? I called AT&T and they told me it was. I was like "WTF...the lady who signed me up to use international calling only told me it was one charge of $1.29 per call per minute!!!"

GSM is worldwide. The network of choice for the world. Isn't that great? Hehe.... International Roaming is a b*tch.

No seriously you should have used prepaid GSM sims. That's what I did in Hong Kong. The machine is conveniently in the airport or other places in town. Put like $10 or $20 in the machine and out comes a sim-card with minutes on it. Remove your AT&T sim-card from your World Phone (which means you won't receive incoming phone calls), pop in the prepaid sim. Much cheaper, you talk until you start running out of prepaid minutes. Recharge the card or buy another. I probably spent $50 to $75 for a week and I called from "everywhere".

Sprint has international roaming (so does VZW and all the others) and it ain't cheap. You were probably better off buying an Orange card or any European sim-card.

Exactly what most savvy world travelers do.

you can receive incoming calls with the prepaid sim; the other person just needs to know your new number (at least that's the way it worked for me). Or do you mean you can't receive incoming calls to your old number? (which is true since the new sim has a new #)

just curious, but how does Sprint offer international roaming if the phones aren't GSM? (uses analog?)

chikai: I haven't used AT&T but have used t-mobile's international roaming. They didn't charge twice like that (but calls were very expensive)

You are correct. If you just pickup any sim-card, nobody will know the number, no incoming calls because no one knows to call you. Of course you just give out the number to friends and family and then yes they'll be able to reach you unless the local GSM carrier blocks incoming for guest sims. It will be an international call for your friends stateside.

What's cool is Sprint phones work worldwide too because CDMA is popping up all over the world these days and the Sprint dual-band tri-mode phone will work in Australia, Central America, parts of Asia. In Europe where GSM is king, Sprint will issue you a sim-card with your PCS number burned in. They will also provide you with a GSM World phone if you wish. Sprint has worldwide roaming agreements with all carriers so you'll be able to talk all over Europe...but as our friend has pointed out...it will cost you.

http://www1.sprintpcs.com/explore/co...ntlWelcome.jsp

that's good to hear that there are options for international roaming. I thought ATT & T-mobile were the only ones that had it since they're GSM. CDMA is a superior technology compared to GSM so I hope it does start popping up in other places than the US but Europe is *deeply* entrenched in GSM at the moment. Plus, I think they're moving forward with their 3G solutions for GSM (= big $ investments). With all that money spent on upgrades and with all the GSM phones in use over there, it's going to be a long while before CDMA gets a significant footprint in Europe (although I hope it does happen sooner than later).

Another example is Brazil- companies there recently upgraded from analog but they also went with GSM.

What's your take on why countries would go with GSM?? (even though CDMA is a better technology- [better bandwidth usage]) Is it because the licensing fees/royalties are cheaper for GSM compared to CDMA?

I could be wrong but I think it's because it is cheaper to upgrade to GSM now and GSM does have a convergence path that will ultimately lead to a "CDMA-like technology." In other words, one day there will only be two favours of CDMA throughout the entire world, instead of the 6 or so today.

weird...the AT&T rep also told me they use proprietary phones and they do not accept any other SIM card. I have a SonyEricsson T616. I know you can flash the memory to make them "unlocked" but I've heard people having serious issues in the home network afterwards.

Most ATT phones might be sim-locked and will not accept any other SIM card except an ATT sim-card. That's their regular domestic phones. But in order to use the same phone in the US and in Europe, the phone must be a World phone (i.e. compatible with the two different frequencies). Why would they lock a world phone since it will be inevitably used on a GSM network that ATT does not have roaming agreements with? In Europe, sim-locking is mostly illegal, it's like crippling a phone. That's why prepaid sims are big business overseas and not so big here.

But you are correct; customers attempting to unlock a GSM phone by reflashing the firmware can be disasterous.

South America.
Big ass bill with roaming charges.

when I got my V60, I called t-mobile and they happily gave me a code that unlocked the phone so other sim chips could be used. They seem much more flexible than ATT.

zamo: I hear ya on the big ass bill from roaming charges. In Rio, I used up a $40 prepaid sim so I went back to my t-mobile sim for what I thought would be a few short calls. Roaming charges pushed that months bill to $150+ (it's normally ~$34). just curious, where did you visit in South America?

Peru

u from there?

im from ecuador

yes i am