TalkAbroad

Multi-country calling from Cellular Abroad

ABOVE: Cellular Abroad's "TalkAbroad" service is available with phones from Motorola and other vendors.

In an article titled "Cellular Phones in Europe," I described my experiences with a tri-band GSM phone from Cellular Abroad, an American company that rents or sells mobile phones to travelers. I used the phone with several single-country SIM cards (the tiny devices that serve as the brains of a GSM phone) that let me send and receive calls as if I were a local.

More recently, I've been using a product from CellularAbroad called TalkAbroad, which makes it easy to send or receive calls in more than 100 countries. (It was incredibly useful after a recent cruise from Marseille to Civitavecchia, when I injured myself on the way to Rome Airport and spent 18 days in an Italian hospital without a phone in the room.)

Although TalkAbroad's cost per outgoing call is usually higher than with a single-country SIM card, incoming calls are free in all Western European countries and nearly half a dozen countries of Eastern Europe. This makes TalkAbroad extremely useful if you're visiting more than one country during a trip, since you need to buy only one SIM card and people can reach you in any country with a single phone number.

What the TalkAbroad package includes

TalkAbroad consists of a tri-band GSM cellular phone and a TalkAbroad SIM card with 30 minutes of prepaid "talk time." A US $29 recharge gives you €18 of additional talk time, which is good for about 30 minutes of outgoing calls in most European countries. You can add talk time via phone, e-mail, or Cellular Abroad's Web site while traveling.

TalkAbroad service is valid for nine months from your most recent use. You can keep your account alive from anywhere in the world by making a call, sending a SMS text message, or buying a recharge at least once every nine months.

Prices for TalkAbroad start at US $199 with a tri-band phone and 30 minutes of talk time. More deluxe phones are also available, and dual-phone packages offer savings for couples and families.

For more information on TalkAbroad, continue on to the next page or use the navigation table below.

Next page: Field-testing TalkAbroad

Top photo: Copyright © Motorola.

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