[hershey]

That's a good point. Those cell phones are tricky. A friend of mine went to Italy and spent quite a long time on the phone at work ordering an international cell phone and getting to work just right for her trip. She has a teenaged son at home to keep track of and planned to call home every day. He stayed with relatives, but he'd seen his dad drop dead of a heart attack when he was five or six, so it's only mom and Eric.

[GarySpFc]

A friend of mine went to Italy and spent quite a long time on the phone at work ordering an international cell phone and getting to work just right for her trip. She has a teenaged son at home to keep track of and planned to call home every day.

You need an unlocked GSM world phone. They work with either T-Mobile or Cellular One serices. Indeed, T-Mobile will furnish one if you take their service, but you will have to have it unlocked so it will accept other SIM cards. When you go to another country all you have to do is purchase a SIM card which will work in the second country. We have two Motorola phones, V600 and V620, and use T-Mobile service here. When we travel to Russia we slip in our MegaFom SIM cards, purchase time cards, and we are in business. The MegaFon SIM cards remain in force as long as there is a positive balance.