January 16, 2003 -- We've praised the virtues of cell phones several times in our Newsletter. Bringing a phone with you on an overseas trip not only lets you stay in touch with people at home, it gives you the flexibility to re-book hotels, call attractions for directions and hook up with local friends without fumbling with often-malfunctioning payphones.
Right now, cell phone rental firm TravelCell (www.travelcell.com) is offering a free week's rental, a $29.99 value, plus a 5% discount on airtime to readers of this Frommer's Newsletter only. To get this deal, call 877/CELLPHONE and specify promo code FWF-104. Order by March 1 for trips anytime in 2004 to get the special rate. This is the best deal you'll find right now for renting a phone to use in the UK, Europe or most of Asia.
If you're traveling to the UK, incoming calls are free. So you can stay on the phone all day in London or Leeds, if the call is incoming, and not pay a penny. That's an unbeatable deal.
If you want to make outgoing calls, though, you'll pay by the minute. Including the 5% discount, calls within the UK are 65.5 cents per minute; calls to Europe are 75 cents per minute and calls to the US are 84.5 cents per minute. Within western Europe, incoming calls cost $.94/minute and outgoing calls cost $1.60/minute. In India and China, incoming calls are $1.89/minute and outgoing calls are $2.84/minute. In Argentina, both incoming and outgoing calls are a whopping $3.32/minute.
You'll also have to pay some shipping fees: $15 total for second-day shipping to your US address and a prepaid mailer to send the phone back to TravelCell, and $22.50 for next-day shipping. Canadians can get phones for a US$30 shipping fee.
In exchange, you get a Nokia or Motorola phone that will work in most countries except the US, Canada, South Korea, Japan and parts of the Caribbean. It'll have a UK phone number on the Orange network there, so people will have to make an international call to reach you -- but calls to the UK are much cheaper than calls to, say, Uzbekistan, if that's where you really are. For a $5 setup fee plus 50 extra cents per minute on top of airtime, you can also have your friends call you on a U.S. toll-free 800 number which will forward to your international phone. Make sure to order the phone a few days before you leave, so you can tell your friends your temporary number before you go.
(For folks going on cruises or adventure vacations, TravelCell also rents out satellite phones, but they're not free. They're $149.99 for the first week and $49.99 for each additional week, plus $2.49 a minute for outgoing calls. Softening the blow, the phones offer free incoming calls from anywhere on Earth, though calling you may cost the caller $3 a minute. That's still a lot cheaper than the $8/minute you'd pay for a ship-to-shore call.)
Comparing Cell Costs
TravelCell's per-minute rates are competitive with the other major cell phone rental agencies, RoadPost (www.roadpost.com), WorldCell (www.worldcell.com) and InTouch Global (www.intouchglobal.com). The international roaming plans offered by T-Mobile, Cingular and AT&T Wireless are somewhat cheaper, but you must already have cellphone service with those companies and a world-capable phone. That counts most people out.
The other rental companies do have their strengths. In France, Italy and Switzerland, RoadPost offers rentals that include unlimited free incoming calls for $49 for the first week, $14 for each additional week. WorldCell offers free incoming calls in Switzerland for $39.95 for the first week and $35 for each additional week. For inveterate chatters, that pays for itself within an hour of calling.
WorldCell also offers phones that work in Japan and South Korea for $39.95 for the first week and $35 for each additional week. But if you're flying ANA (All Nippon Airlines) to Japan or Korea, the airline will waive your first two weeks' rental fees with WorldCell. That's a $75 value. You must request your phone a week before traveling. For details and to sign up, click here.
If you intend to be making massive amounts of calls, the cheapest way to go is still to own an unlocked GSM world phone and to buy local prepaid phone chips in your destination country. 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.
Do you have a comment or question regarding this article? Click over to this ongoing discussion on cellphones and join the conversation.