Travel
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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
International Pay As You Go Phone?
Has anyone ever used one for travel? The last few times we went out of the country I used my regular cell phone and it ended up costing a fortune. I'm wondering if I got an international pay as you go phone if it would cut costs a bit?
Re: International Pay As You Go Phone?
My Travel Blog
My Travel Blog
Buy a cheap UNLOCKED Nokia quad band phone. You can get one from Nokia for under $100. The Nokia 2730 is currently $99
Buy a prepaid sim card once you get to the country you are travelling to. Some of the European carriers also have pay as you go plans--you only pay for the calls that you make.
How much did you spend on your last trip. The most we have ever spent internationally was $20 and that was when I was in Spain and was using the phone every day.
Are you currently with AT&T or T-Mobile? If not then you dont have a sim card in your phone and probably have no clue as to what we are talking about
Easiest way to describe a sim card is that its a microchip that pops into your phone and it is attached/linked to your phone number. It can be removed and put into a different phone or it can be removed and replaced with a new sim card that has a new phone number (international or domestic).
There are tons of ways you can do this, but I would definitely recommend the quad band phone, and then getting a sim card in the country you are heading to.
A note of warning however: if you are doing a multiple country tour, you need to make sure that you are allowed to make/receive calls outside the country of purchase. You also need to make sure that you have topped up the phone in the country of purchase before you leave to go to the next, as they cannot put more money on the phone you have bought, say, in Italy, when you are in Germany. Found that one out first hand during the volcano crisis last year. Heh.
Wedding stuff.
We bought a cheap unlocked phone in England this year and used it all over Europe. I've also done it in Mexico. We got a couple different prepaid SIM cards depending on the country. The phone cost equal to $15 and the SIM cards were between $5-$10. (depends from which and to which country and if you want to include texting, etc.) You can also bring an unlocked ATT/T-mobile (GSM) phone from here and that will work....except if you are going to UK/Europe you have to worry about using an adapter for charging it.
A SIM card looks like this:
Usually, it pops into a special little slot on the back of the phone (typically behind the battery):
There are two kinds of cell phone networks in the US: CDMA (Verizon & Sprint) and GSM (T-Mobile). In the case of CDMA, the network assigns an identity (the phone number, and how the network recognizes the phone) when it's activated. With GSM networks, it's the SIM card that gives the phone its identity. (In some cases you may not even realize there's a SIM card in there, since GSM phones in the US are sometimes sold with a SIM card already inside.)
Basically, with GSM phones, you can just pop the SIM card out of one phone and into another, and now your number is attached to the new phone! So easy! ...in theory.
The problem is that in the US (and other parts of North/South America) the cell phone networks like to have some control over the phone market as well, so they lock the phones to their own network. If you pop another network's SIM card into a locked phone, it won't work. "Unlocking" a cell phone means changing the settings so that it stops checking for a specific provider. There are tricks and hacks to do this, and in some phones it's easier to change that setting than in others.
However, in Europe and Asia, people often buy their phone separately from their service plan. Phones purchased this way are already unlocked, so that you can pop in the SIM card you already have. Or vice versa: If you want to change networks, you can just go sign up for a new plan, and they'll give you a new SIM to put in your phone.
What the PPs are suggesting is that you buy an unlocked GSM phone (on eBay, etc). Then when you get to whatever country you're visiting, you can buy a SIM card to put in it from a local prepaid cell service. I actually use a prepaid plan here all the time, because I don't spent much time on the phone. I bought the SIM card when I arrived, and whenever my balance gets low, I go to a convenience store and buy a credit that I can add (by calling the service number and typing in a PIN code).