Care to give any information about why they are the best?
That’s not really much of a big deal. When I lived abroad, I had the local phone plan, and I had to either use the country code (+36) or type the internal long distance extension (06) anyway for local numbers, so it’s only one additional keystroke (the +). Don’t know how it is in every country, but for international travel, you should store your phone numbers with the +CountryCode extension anyway for greatest flexibility. Or, if you’re dialing the US from abroad (if that’s what you mean by local), all you have to do is add the + before the 11-digit US phone number, so if you’re calling 1 555 555 5555, you dial +1 555 555 5555. (The + signals that the next number(s) is the country code, so you don’t need to know what your local country’s calling out prefix even is.)
When I was abroad, they simply dialed my normal number from the US (didn’t need the + or anything). No additional rates applied to them, but I was charged the $0.20/per minute, just like I would be if I were making the outbound call.
I think she means if you are in another country, and someone in that country needs to call you, they must place the call as if they are dialing to the U.S. and therefore incur international calling charges. Which is the case.
Ah, yes, in that case.
I don’t know which countries you are referring to, but my (very cheap) dutch sim only arrangement just announced that my minutes, texts and MBs will from June 1st be valid throughout the EU (and a few other European countries) as if I were in the Netherlands.
So from then on I can use my phone all throughout Europe as if I were at home, whitout an extra cent to be paid. So no more need for extra pre paid sims, although I still have some of those with some money on it.
Not sure if this new deal is an EU wide standard.
On Verizon also.
$40 per month for 100 minutes 100 outgoing texts and 100 MB data as an alternate to the $10/d TravelPass. What I decided to do for my daughter going on a school sponsored trip to Spain next month for two weeks and my wife visiting a son studying abroad in New Zealand for three weeks overlapping in time. If you are going to be international more than 4 days a month that might be a better option for you.
For my son in New Zealand we put his phone on hiatus for the duration and he picked a local one to use there. We put a $15/m international plan to call him on my wife’s line.
FWIW mega-kudos to Verizon customer service. My wife and son had gone into a local Verizon (not corporate) store before he went out of country to take of whatever needed to be done and the people there simply messed up, never putting that $15/m feature in place nor his line on hiatus. We were being charged hundreds per month for my wife’s calls to him. Customer service fixed the charges for us retroactively and put in place what we were supposed to have had. It was a long call mind you but they were polite, professional, and very helpful.