Making Phone Calls in Europe
My twitter, minutes before boarding the plane to Frankfurt: “oh god… What are Ponzi and I going to do for phone service when we get to Germany in 12 hours?! AT&T will gouge us!” One of our Live regulars (Mike-Linux) pitched in a few solutions:
The best thing you can do is buy a prepaid SIM card with some money on it. most of the loose SIM cards will have like 10,- euro already on it. I don’t know if your iPhone is already hacked, so u could use another SIM card. if not maybe u should buy a cheap phone for 20 or 30 euro’s. This solution won’t be handy though if you’re calling to America. But I don’t know what AT&T would charge you, when u would call from Europe to America.
Internet-wise, u might could sign up for a temporary T-mobile account? There are a lot of wireless hotspots in, and around Frankfurt.
I saw this on TV today and I think it would be really good solving your phone problem. It’s called Cellity. read the 12 steps on this site, and you’ll see that it saves up to 90% of your phone costs, even with your phone and SIM card from AT&T. Cellity also can make group calls up to 6 persons at once. Also has a solution for when u are staying in another country in a hotel.
Frederik from Jahjah also submitted suggestions:
The easiest way to avoid all roaming charges is to get a local SIM card, you can get them at any T-Mobile, E-Plus, O2, Vodafone, Aldi, SimYo, Fonic or whatever store for 10 bucks, it comes with 10 bucks credit which you can use to make local calls while you are there.
To make any calls back to the US or anywhere else, simply use your local number and Jajah, as Jajah will call you and incoming calls are free of charge in Europe only the cheap Jajah VoIP rates apply and you can call any phone anywhere in the world, they don’t have to be online.
Don’t use your US phone / number in Germany, active and passive roaming charges are outrageous. For frequent travels I recommend a MAXroam SIM next time. Have fun in Germany, Frankfurt is not pretty but got a nice nightlife, check out the Cocoon club. Get back to me if you have any further questions regarding Jajah, Germany or Frankfurt ;-)
Ultimately, I just fired up Skype on the MacBook and phoned through it. A bit unwieldy, but quite practical and affordable from any location.
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3 Comments
KingBee
September 21st, 2007
at 5:11pm
Just got back from 2 weeks in England, and I had the same fears about using my iPhone there. What I did was just pop out the SIM so I wouldn’t get gouged on data roaming, and did what you did — just used Skype on my MacBook. Man, I wish Apple would let me just turn off EDGE roaming on my iPhone. $.02 per KB can add up pretty quickly — as some people have learned, to the detriment of their bank accounts.
But Skype is AWESOME for this purpose.
Frederik Hermann
September 21st, 2007
at 6:30pm
Chris,
ha, that this darn Skype is still around ;-)
Thanks for the mention, highly appreciated and especially when you are NOT online you can use Jajah anywhere you want with your mobile (there is not even a data connection needed when using our plugin). Check out http://mobile.jajah.com with your iPhone for your next international call on the go (nicer interface to follow soon).
My friends from MAXroam Pat and Sean just presented their SIM at TechCrunch40 btw, so I gave you quite a heads up two weeks ago.
Thanks anyways and have a great weekend, I hope you had some fun in good old Germany!
Frederik
Mary Rose
April 9th, 2009
at 7:05am
We are just beginning to get our 12-website, Ning-based virtual learning center online and in coordination with TransitionUS are using Skype to create sustainable living communities on an international scale.
I had put off downloading the program since i had problems setting it up years ago, but do i ever luv it now. Its been fabulous to work with other people in a hands-free environment while getting together on the same web page to upload new data and configure new tools. I don’t have a camera as yet, but even without it when we are working on the same webpage it is like being in the same room. What I particularly like is the clarity of sound.
And then to be able to call other Skype phones for no charge is really easing my phone bill. Also i really like being able to set up a conference call with as many as 22 people by just adding each one to the initial call.
Since I live in a mountain region where cell phone and DSL are “iffy” at tmes, then Skype is a real dream for me.
I was looking over at the number of people online on Skype and saw it was over 16 million. So, a lot of people using this “oldie but goodie” and i’m going to continue to use it as the kingpin for connecting people worldwide in a peace movement generate via sustainable living communities which serve to conserve and maintain our life support system.