International travel question

[YMark]

I'll be traveling to Prague, Vienna, and Budapest in a couple of weeks and will be taking my 8100 (unlocked) with me. Email and data isn't a MUST (but would be nice), just voice.

Does anyone know if a single SIM will work in all three countries?

T-Mobile offers the following:
Prague, Austria, and Hungary - $.99 / minute for voice (World Class International Roaming is free)

Unlimited Email - $20 / month pro-rated, so this would cost about $10 for two weeks

$15 / mb of data.

When I was in Mazatlan last year, I had the unlimited Email for $20 / month and was NOT charged data. I pin messaged people and was on the web.

My question is whether or not it would be advantageous to get a different SIM for Europe. The only calls I would be making would be back to the USA. Not sure if it is worth it.

Thanks

[sshambar]

I'll be traveling to Prague, Vienna, and Budapest in a couple of weeks and will be taking my 8100 (unlocked) with me. Email and data isn't a MUST (but would be nice), just voice.

Does anyone know if a single SIM will work in all three countries?

T-Mobile offers the following:
Prague, Austria, and Hungary - $.99 / minute for voice (World Class International Roaming is free)

Unlimited Email - $20 / month pro-rated, so this would cost about $10 for two weeks

$15 / mb of data.

When I was in Mazatlan last year, I had the unlimited Email for $20 / month and was NOT charged data. I pin messaged people and was on the web.

My question is whether or not it would be advantageous to get a different SIM for Europe. The only calls I would be making would be back to the USA. Not sure if it is worth it.

Thanks

I've been in all those cities in the last month, and my SIM works great everywhere. I'm on AT&T though, and don't use the phone much (just to get VMs), and pretty much use the BB for web/email w/ unlimited data plan.

For calls, I'd suggest finding one of the many internet/intl phone cafes around all these cities, which will offer very inexpensive calling to the US (pennies a minute). Using any of the US carriers for European calls is very expensive - so much so I've just forwarded all my calls directly to VM.

Note: even w/ unlimited data, AT&T has marked much of my data usage as roaming, and I've had $800 bills that I've had to call in and correct (which they do happily) - intl data doesn't include tethering (which they constantly ask if I'm doing - I'm not), so don't use it as a modem and expect free data. However, you may have better luck with T-mobile not misclassifying you usage ;)

In summary, phone works great, and the BB works in every European country I've been to w/o issue (which is a lot), but don't expect it to be cheap for calls. I actually bought a cheap cellphone and just pop in a local prepayed SIM so I can make/recv local calls easily. There are "dual SIM" solutions that let you switch SIM's w/o pulling the battery and switching them manually, but I haven't tried them yet; you may want to investigate that though.

Scott

[stlduckhunter]

I have also used my BB in most all the cities that you mentioned and all over western Europe. Voice and data works fine, allbeit very expensive. You can buy a cheap local SIM for calls and that will save money but will not satisfy the data issue. If data is important, you new to use your native SIM.

[Ephraim]

If I use a sim from over in europe, but have an international data plan for data will that work?

[djm2]

If I use a sim from over in europe, but have an international data plan for data will that work?

SIM from Europe will work for calls to that SIM's number. Data will require the SIM from Sprint, with the international plan activated on it.

[AlexKidd]

I've not been to those countries, but I had no problem using a Blackberry 7105T while in China last year on T-Mobile. Data and voice worked - but voice was way expensive. If I needed to call the US, or a local number I just used my wife's cell phone with China Mobile SIM.

Also, I recommend not bothering with the international e-mail plan, just pay the per kb price. My charge came out to less than the cost of the plan and I used e-mail all I wanted - not a big bandwidth hog at all.

--Kidd