going to europe soon, and I'm pretty much going to be there for a few months so I will be getting a local SIM to put in my unlocked 7290. However, I want a transition from when I get there to getting the other SIM so that I can still get my email. I was planning to keep my rogers SIM in there and roam for a week while i'm there. I know the costs are really expensive. Since roaming charges are outside of the data plan (the "unlimited") one i have now. I was thinking, how much can i drop my monthly bill so that I can still use BB services, but i dont need this unlimited package since I will already be paying per MB outside of that plan. It would be great if I could pay no monthly fee at all and just be able to roam but I doubt that can be done? right now I have a voice plan, sms plan, data plan, so I want to drop that to the minimum as possible so that I can still sms/data for a week.

I understand that every carrier is different, but Cingular has an unlimited international data plan that's just $20/month more than the unlimited domestic data plan. Cingular is pretty good about letting you add and cancel features whenever you want -- again, that's my experience. You might see if Rogers has anything comparable in the way of plans and policies on cancelling features.

My experience with Cingular is that the international data plan isn't very expensive, but international voice roaming IS!

Data roaming for emails and SMS is not that expensive. Pretty much every European country has reasonable pricing for data roaming, but voice could put you for up to $5/minute.

Your best plan is to limit your blackberry experience by emails and SMS to save $$$.

Stop using Web browsing, limit yourself by reading emails but not attachments, disable automatic More in blackberry, set phone to 'Do not Disturb' so that nobody can call you- and you shouldn't call anyone.

Berry One sums it up. I used my Rogers BB in the UK a short while ago. Data costs were cheap but voice roaming costs were outrageous. Buy a cheap pay as you go phone at your destination and use your BB for data only.

I understand what everyone is saying, according to rogers website, roaming in europe is $50/megabyte.

The thing is, i'll be in europe for 6 month-1year and i'd rather just put a sim from a local carrier there and use it, so i can use it as a phone there, sms with the nice keyboard and use email and some carriers in europe do not have data roaming fees for roaming within europe (ill have to check into that)

my question is more or less, can i still roam without having a base blackberry plan? because i'd be saving $60 CDN/month from my bb plan, and i would be paying on top of that roaming.. I'm assuming you can't even use a blackberry without having a bb plan on it, so ill have to use teh $40/month one?

If you are going to Europe for up to 1 year it may be more cost-efficient for you to cancel your Rogers service and buy European blackberry from the carrier in the country where you plan to stay most of the time.

If blackberry you have now from Rogers is unlocked you may be able to just buy a local SIM with blackberry data plan.

I've heard that T-Mobile in Europe offers good deals on blackberries.

Berry One: Yup, it's unlocked and that's what I plan to-do I just wanted to see what I could do as a transition phase when I get there for the first week or so till I get settled. Hence why I was wondering what might be a good option for the data plans and see if it was possible to get them to drop it, what I"m going todo is give them a call and explain what I want to-do and see if they can switch my price plan the day i'm leaving or something and then cancel it a certain amount of time later. but they will probably charge me for one month anyways.