Way to Russia Talk Lounge

scottso69 · Frequent Guest Joined: 07 May 2008 Posts: 22 Location: usa

Hello-i will be visiting stp in september and have been told that my cell phone from the usa will probably not work.I contacted my carrier(t-mobile)and was advised that stp is not in their coverage area but other companies are.They said phone should work but no guarantee!Also said roaming is quite expensive.I wonder if i should just leave the phone home and get a phone card from way to russia?How would i use a phone card to call the usa?Is there phones around town?or can i use the card say from the hotel room?Thanks for your help.Scott B.

danbrew · Posted: Sat Jul 05, 2008 10:49 pm Post subject:

If you have a GSM phone, it "will work", but will be hugely expensive due to international roaming. AT&T/Cingular charged me something like $5.99 a minute. Ouch!

If you have an unlocked GSM phone, you can simply purchase a SIM card in Russia and get a Russian phone number.

Usin a Russian SIM card in your GSM phone is good for those local (calls in Russia) that you may wish to make (to other phones in Russia), but not so good for calls back home. Only you can decide whether you can live without your specific phone number - if you receive a lot of calls on your mobile, you may have no choice but to accept the high price. Consider, though, getting a Vonage / Skype solution as detailed below and then just forwarding your US cell number to the US Vonage or Skype number.

My two cents, though, as a frequent visitor to Russia, go sign up for Vonage or Skype or something like that and use Voice Over IP (VoIP) to call back to the US.

The last time I was in Moscow, I used Vonage on my laptop and talked for at least 30 minutes every day for the three weeks I was there. Then I did the same thing in Japan, China, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand.

Depending upon why you are traveling, email may suffice. Or you may need to check voicemail for work, communicate with your coworkers, etc. I've found Vonage to be really really great - and the "softphone" (as they call it) is something like $10/month for existing Vonage customers.

It was very nice - and saved me a ton of rubles. Smile

scottso69 · Frequent Guest Joined: 07 May 2008 Posts: 22 Location: usa

Hi-Thank you Danbrew-I appreciate your response to me.Scott.

maarten1986 · Just Starting Joined: 04 Jul 2008 Posts: 5

I think the mobile phone might be a problem. Europe uses another frequency band than the U.S., see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GSM_frequency_ranges.

scottso69 · Frequent Guest Joined: 07 May 2008 Posts: 22 Location: usa

I appreciate your response.I will check this out.Thank you.scott b.