Expert: DebiN - 7/12/2011

Question
Hello!

I am traveling to Florence, Italy in the fall for a semester and am hopelessly lost on what to do for a cell phone. I want to know what I need to get to save the most money while being able to contact friends in Italy and family back home in America. I have heard of getting a sim card that allows for international use and have also heard of renting a cell phone that can be used internationally. Also, if I buy a phone that allows for international use, do I have to get something else for that phone for it to work abroad? Any information you can give me on the best options for using a cell phone abroad would be greatly appreciated. I would be willing to rent a cell for a semester or buy a phone that I can use when I return home. Please get back to me at your convenience and thank you so much.

Best,
Ben

Answer
Probably the lowest cost way to do this is to get a quad band GSM SIM unlocked phone. When you get to Florence, but a local SIM card. You will be able to use this to make calls to friends in Florence and locally. For communicating with family back home, there's not really a cheap way to do this, but it will be less expensive to make international calls to the US with a local Italy SIM then vice versa. I would recommend that you make the calls versus them calling you because your phone number will be an international call for them if they tried to call you. You may want to consider just using Skype or something along those lines for communicating back home and use the cell phone for local calls. Hope this helps.