[veryberry3908]

I am planning a vacation to Italy and I was wondering if I needed to do anything special for my Tour. I know it is a world edition phone and I know it has the Verizon simcard but do I need to get some sort of European plan from Verizon? Or can I just fly over and be good to go? How does this work? TIA!

[greystealth]

Call the global team theyll give you all the details. It can be very expensive using your phone abroad. I just returned from europe and only used voice because data was crazy expensive to use.

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[sinnerman]

Yes call global support first and they'll give you rates and other info about traveling to italy in particular. You could also ask them to unlock your phone so you can use local italian sim cards in your phone which may cheaper.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[veryberry3908]

Does anybody know if BBMing would be free?

[Crunch140]

I believe that would be data usage overseas. I'll know for certain when I get my bill back for this month.

Just got back from China. It worked flawlessly. Connected 3G in Shanghai, and Edge & GPRS in areas which didn't have 3G.

[moogoo88]

How long are you staying? If you are staying for almost a month, I'd talk to global support and ask them for their globalemail package (unlimited data for $69.99 anywhere you get a signal and BBM works awesome). THEN get/borrow/buy a cheap GSM phone and purchase a simcard to use there in Italy. One week before you leave Italy, have them schedule the switch back to your original plan on the day you land in the states.

If you are staying less than 15 days, I'd just unlock the Tour and use an Italian simcard. Make sure you call VZW and have them turn on international calls and data just in case (you can always turn off data roaming on your Tour). If you can live without your data plan, get your emails and etc. back at the hotel or at internet cafes. Sure wish the Tour had wifi now huh?

Anyways, I travel a lot and currently have the Globalemail package. I'll call global support one week before I leave for the states, and schedule them to switch me to a voice plan so I'm good to go when I land in the US. I'm overseas and BBM works great.

[veryberry3908]

I am only staying two weeks so I think I will take your advice and unlock my tour and get an Italian sim card. Thanks for your help!

[IslesFan]

You can have them prorate the Global email change, I went to Europe twice this year, once for 10 days, and once for 4. In each case(I had a storm) I had them turn on Global data for the duration of the trip only.

If you are only staying for two weeks, you need to consider how many calls you plan to be making, versus how much it is for a sim card.

Honestly, If I were you, I'd either: 1. Get the global email plan and deal with the phone calls, or 2. Get the global email plan and get a second phone with an italian sim.

[SupaBlackB]

you can also have vzw unlock your phone(tell them your goin away for a while, and need to have your phone unlocked), then use a pre-paid sim card from one of the carriers there....

http://forums.crackberry.com/f141/re...erizon-288490/

[jlb21]

I'm still a little confused.

If I unlock a Tour (or whatever), and then go over, can my wife send mail/call? I take it as a no, unless she wanted to dial the Intl number.

What I did last time I travelled overseas (to the UK), was to buy a cheap GSM there and have that for my wife to call in an emergency. And then at night, I would call home, let it ring once, and then hangup. That was my signal that I was firing up my laptop in the hotel and preparing a skype out call (rates were like $.02 per minute).

I guess the foreign SIM card in the Tour is like doing the same thing.

But if you kept the base card in there, one could call/send mail as normal, but then you get hit with data/call roaming, right? Which is very expensive, right?

Also, if you call to unlock, any reason to re-lock afte returning to the states?

TIA!

[soxwrx]

using a pre pay sim card is really only useful if you are going to make local calls inside that country.
if you want data the global email plan is a great deal because they will pro-rate the 69.99 for amount to time you need it overseas. i have been traveling all over the world with my storm and now my tour and it has worked flawlessly except one day where there was a RIM outage effecting a large part of europe. in that case the free call back to the US to the global support team gave me all the help i could ask for.

if you want to call back home the most cost effective way is to download skype on your computer or ipod touch(wasnt it supposed to come out for blackberry?) it cost only pennies and minute and for a few dollars you can get a local number for any country you choose so people can call you as well as leave you voicemail.

FYI there is a free feature now to allow your cell phone number to appear on the caller ID of the person you are calling eliminating the need for the call back let it ring ....call back again so i know its you trick

there is also a plan that i believe is 5.99? that give you discount rates to make and receive call but im not sure.... my voice plan is with ATT and my verizon blackberry is DATA only for business

[bbfan2009]

I have a Tour with Sprint and just came back from Europe.

No issues with voice calls, emails and web browsing. Whenever I landed and roamed in a new country, I get an SMS from Sprint telling me the voice per minute rate in that country. Very cool.

When I traveled to different cities, I noticed the carrier changes at the top. I guess it depends on the area. I've gotten T Mobile D, Vodafone.de, O2, etc.

Now, the problems:
- SMS didn't seem to work
- GPS is very sporadic. Most of the times, it can't get any satellites. Is it disabled by the local carrier??? As a result, most photos that I took do not have embedded location.
- Tethering did not work. Is this disabled also by the local carrier or should this work??

One odd thing was I think I saw Google Map able to acquire satellite fix in one afternoon. Very odd as Google Map is definitely unable to acquire satellite fix in US.

[siebenge]

I am from Europe (The Netherlands) and am very much interested in having the tour. Anyone experience with really using the tour on any european sim card? I'm intending to order an unlocked tour from the US and use it in NL.

[latina berry]

Welcome a good luck!!!!