[dmeyerrph]

OK - non BB user here with 2 college kids going to the UK and Australia for 6 months each, at the same time.
We have Verizon but the phones are not world phones.

Any recommendations on what to do?
Verizon has an International plan for $69.99 per month but I would have to purchase a world phone like a BB Tour. May cost $$ as non of their phones are elig for an upgrade. We have a friend in Norway right now who has this VZ plan with a BB Tour and uses it for email and BB Messenger.

Or should we purchase unlocked BB Tours in the US and purchase a SIM in Uk and Australia? Will they be able to use email and all BB features with a Pre-paid SIM?

Or buy a phone once they get overseas with a pay as you go feature?

Thanks in advance for any advice

[Pete6]

I can't say about Australia but the UK has lots of options for GSM phones.

For 6 months, you are clearly not looking at a contract phone so you seem to have two choices.

1). buy a pre-paid (called Pay as You Go or PAYG) in the UK deal phone + SIM card deal. This is cheap to get into but expensive to make phone calls.

2). Buy a phone or a GSM BlackBerry that is unlocked (9700, 8900, 8310, etc.) and then buy a SIM only deal. These are monthby month deals with no phone attached. I pay 20 pounds a month and I get 600 minutes, free calls to any UK landline (except numbers starting with 08 or 09), unlimited SMSs, BlackBerry dataplan and fair use unlimited internet.

Orange do a similar deal.

[RadioRaiders]

I travel alot and use pre-pad SIM cards (as Pete mentioned above) and I can say I've had alot of problems going the pre-paid route with BlackBerrys because of their special and closed nature. It's possible, but I've found it to be swimming upstream. For me, a "regular" (ie: non-BlackBerry or Apple) unlocked quad-band GSM phone is the best bet when doing pre-paid. Android and Symbian work well in those cases.