traveling in Europe

[ssax997]

excuse my ignorance, I'm leaving the US with my iphone (which has international calling roaming for 99 cents/min) to travel through the Netherlands, Belgium, France, and Switzerland. Should I buy a calling card, and how do you use it, and which card should I get?

[Hawk]

Originally Posted by ssax997

excuse my ignorance, I'm leaving the US with my iphone (which has international calling roaming for 99 cents/min) to travel through the Netherlands, Belgium, France, and Switzerland. Should I buy a calling card, and how do you use it, and which card should I get?

The problem is that even with a calling card, the phone is still calling from outside the US, so international rates will still apply.
My recommendation is to put the phone in Airplane mode with WiFi on, and use it that way. There have been numerous reports about people that went overseas and came back to phone bills that were in the THOUSANDS of dollars.
You're only other option (and only if you have a 3G or older iPhone) is to jailbreak it, and then unlock it and use a a prepaid SIM from overseas. If you have a 3Gs, there is no unlock currently.

Another option is to call AT&T and tell them your travel plans and see what's available Data and voice-wise while in Europe. It's still a sure bet that you're probably going to have a very large phone bill on your return though.

There is one more option I can think of, and that is to pickup a cheap pre-paid phone while in Europe.

Or Use Skype or some other VOIP service, but you would need to keep the phone in Airplane mode with WiFi on to avoid accidentally connecting to the GSM network out there and accrewing charges.

[GADeputy]

You can also install iCall from App Store. Then put your phone in airplane mode and as long as you have wifi you can use iCall to make free phone calls to anywhere in the U.S.
The calls are limited to 5 minutes though with the free account but you can make as many of them as you want.