Calling home from Spain with my USmobile.

June 19, 2011 5:52 AM

We tmobile service in the US. Traveling to Spain, while our non-techy parents stay with our children here. We won't need to use our mobiles much in Spain, but need to be easily accessible to parents at all times. What's the easiest, least expensive way to call home? How do other sim cards affect our phone #?
posted by smelvis to Travel & Transportation around Spain (6 answers total)

Having a different sim means a different (spanish) number. If all you need is to talk to you parents, you might want to just keep your US sim and just keep any conversations as brief as possible.
posted by Oktober at 6:39 AM on June 19, 2011

If you have a tri-band unlocked phone, you should be able to buy a pay-as-you-go sim in Spain and use it in the phone. I've used my US T-mobile phone in the UK with no problems. If you plan to make many calls within Spain (to hotels, friends, etc), this is the cheapest option. But as the previous poster noted, for just emergencies, paying roaming charges (eg $2 per minute) is probably easiest.

Switching sim cards has no effect on the phone. If your phone is still locked, the other sim just won't work. If you switch sim cards, any phone numbers you have stored on the sim (as opposed to in the phone memory) will obviously not be there on the new sim - this wasn't a problem for me, as I actively wanted to switch back to my UK contacts (I was using my old sim). But if you rely on your phone to remember phone numbers, make sure they are on the phone and not just on the sim.
posted by jb at 6:44 AM on June 19, 2011

Best answer: Realistically if you aren't planning on chatting away, and only want to be accessible in case of emergency, I'd call t-mobile and get their international plan for the month, and then if you make a call it'll cost you a few bucks. I'm generally of the view that unless you are regularly using your phone it isn't worth dealing with getting your phone unlocked and buying a payg SIM.
posted by JPD at 8:17 AM on June 19, 2011

Sim cards aren't as easily available as you might think. Two years ago I thought buying a local sim in Barcelona would be the obvious solution for this. I spent an ENTIRE DAY trying to find one. Several stores said they didn't know what I was talking about; one was out of stock; and then finally when I was directed to the Vodafone counter inside the Corte Ingles, it took -literally- an hour while we waited in line behind various confused people in line.

And then, once we got the local SIM installed (which wasn't cheap, as I recall,) it turned out to be a recently-retired number belonging to a man ("Agostino") who was getting collection agency calls every half hour. Every half hour! And we couldn't turn it off because the whole point was being accessible by phone to my mom who was watching my kids back in the US. We didn't speak enough Spanish to explain to them who we were; but I don't think it'd have mattered. It was a nightmare.
posted by fingersandtoes at 8:59 AM on June 19, 2011

Response by poster: Thanks. Google was overwhelming with all the sim card strategies
posted by smelvis at 11:12 AM on June 19, 2011

I would get a Google Voice number, give that number to the parents, and then tell GV to ring my local SIM's number.
posted by zippy at 8:29 PM on June 19, 2011