June 18, 2004 -- Competing phone-rental firm RoadPost (www.roadpost.com) has a new deal for travelers to Greece, just in time for the Olympics. Their new "OneRoam Greece" rental packages offer free incoming calls during your trip to Greece. Outgoing calls are between $1.19 and $1.79/minute depending on how much you pay up front - a $79/month rental fee gets you $1.79/minute calls, but you can pay more to get cheaper outgoing calls. You can't rent for less than a month at a time.
Since you have to commit to a month's rental, this RoadPost deal is best for trips of two weeks or more, or if you plan to receive a lot of calls. If your spouse or kids plan to call you for an hour at a time, you could save a whole lot of money here. If you're only headed to Greece for a week and will only make a few quick calls, TravelCell's deal looks more compelling.
To check out RoadPost's various packages for Greece and to pick up your Olympic phone, go to www.roadpost.com/cellular/rental/greece.asp
For Even Cheaper Options, BYOP
The cheapest way to make and receive calls overseas is still to bring your own phone. If you have a world-capable phone and AT&T Wireless, T-Mobile, Cingular or Verizon Wireless service, you can make and receive calls abroad using your existing phone for usually around a dollar a minute. (Ask your cell phone company whether your phone will work where you're going.)
If you have an unlocked, world-capable cell phone on the GSM system, you can make things even cheaper by buying a prepaid cell phone card at a phone shop. You can often get your AT&T, Cingular or T-Mobile GSM phone unlocked by calling your cell phone carrier and explaining that you're going for a long trip overseas. For a flat €15 ($18.90) in Holland, for instance, you can get a chip with free incoming calls and €5 ($6.30) worth of outgoing calls; local calls cost between 15 and 60 cents/minute and calls to the US cost about $1/minute. But you've got to deal with the hassle of finding cell phone shops, negotiating language barriers and communicating your new temporary phone number to contacts at home.
If you don't need to be reachable, making your calls home to the US from pay phones with a locally-bought low-cost calling card can still be cheaper than using a cell phone. But for the security, convenience and ease that a cell phone provides, this TravelCell deal is terrific.
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