Cingular cell phone service - Cingular in Spain advice

Author

Cingular in Spain advice

DTC

2007-04-12, 12:33 pm

OK, I'm gonna sound like a clueless newbie here (retorts ignored)...

One of my customers is going to Spain for two weeks in about two or three
weeks and wants to use her Cingular phone and I really didn't want to jump
into any mis-informed suggestions. I'll ask if she is looking more towards
using her phone for local calls or to call back to the states (which I
suspect is what she intends to do).

Open to suggestions.

John Navas

2007-04-12, 12:33 pm

On Thu, 12 Apr 2007 16:24:19 GMT, DTC < no_spam@move_along_f
olks.foob>
wrote in <T2tTh.20742$PL.2028@newsread4.news.pas.earthlink.net>:

>OK, I'm gonna sound like a clueless newbie here (retorts ignored)...
>
>One of my customers is going to Spain for two weeks in about two or three
>weeks and wants to use her Cingular phone and I really didn't want to jump
>into any mis-informed suggestions. I'll ask if she is looking more towards
>using her phone for local calls or to call back to the states (which I
>suspect is what she intends to do).
>
>Open to suggestions.

The Cingular FAQ (link below) has an extensive section on international
usage. For a significant number of calls back to the USA, the most
cost-effective solution is usually:
* If the phone is quad-band, have Cingular unlock the phone; otherwise
buy a cheap unlocked phone with international bands (900 and 1800).
* Once she gets there, buy and use a cheap prepaid local SIM, on which
incoming calls are usually free. Works best for local calls too.
* Use an international callback service, or use SMS messaging to have
people originate international calls from the USA.

--
Best regards, FAQ FOR CINGULAR WIRELESS:
John Navas <http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/ Cingu...less_FA
Q>

Dennis Ferguson

2007-04-12, 3:33 pm

On 2007-04-12, DTC < no_spam@move_along_f
olks.foob> wrote:
> One of my customers is going to Spain for two weeks in about two or three
> weeks and wants to use her Cingular phone and I really didn't want to jump
> into any mis-informed suggestions. I'll ask if she is looking more towards
> using her phone for local calls or to call back to the states (which I
> suspect is what she intends to do).

Roaming in Spain is $0.99 with Cingular World Traveler on the account,
$1.29 otherwise. The price is fixed for incoming and outgoing calls,
both local and to the US.

For two weeks she's almost certainly better off with a local SIM if
she is going to be using the phone more than a bit. The two mobile
companies I remember there are

http://www.movistar.es
http://www.vodafone.es

though there's at least one other one. If she needs to keep her US
number alive forwarding to the incoming number of a VoIP service and
then forwarding the service to the Spanish mobile is one way to
do this (I use Skype for this; forwarding to a Spanish mobile is 27
cents/minute) if she has an account somewhere already. If not, though,
even the 34 cents/minute Cingular World Connect rate is cheap enough that
forwarding directly to the Spanish mobile (incoming calls will be free)
is better than roaming.

For calling back to the US, if she buys a local SIM she should ask
if they have any cheap add-on packages for US calls. I've gotten
good rates to the US on prepaid SIMs in the UK and Germany fairly
recently.

Dennis Ferguson

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