For overseas travel, domestic phones are the best bet

From michael owen, hampton, va

While living in honduras I had access to semi broadband internet in my home. If you have access to an internet connection I would recommend taking your little vonage box along for the ride and being able to make calls back to the U.S. for free can't be beat. Also the unlocked GSM cell phones work good especially if it is quad band and you can pick up a sim card dirt cheap. In england I paid for calls that I made on my cell phone, so when I didn't have to make any calls I could make a 10# card last 3 months. Just some proven advice, take it as you may.

From adam krant hemet ca

When i was in france and great brit i had to use my att phone.Which gave me a @u^&$ large bill.Only when i cane back to the states did i notice a program i got on my iphone that lets you make an voip call for .006 a min alot better than $1.25 a min

From Thomas Melton

"Cellphones for the globetrotter", has Jonathan Blum never heard of GSM
networks provided by At&t and T-Mobile for overseas travel? If he really
wants to compair plans for the "TRUE" globetrotter, he needs to incorporate
all the US carriers in his research and not only Sprint and Verizon. The
charges for both of these carriers are much higher for the globetrotter than
their US based competition from AT&T and T-Mobile. If there is going to be
research done, which most of the time is well organized by Jonathan, please
be thorough. I understand the bit was sponsored by Sprint, but be realistic
and show a true comparison if you are going to perform a research on a
topic. This is why we are so far behind on using world technology when it
comes to cell phones, because people are not comparing all the apples in the
bag for the world traveler.

From robert, los angeles ca.

I use an unlocked cell phone and an international sim card from cellularabroard.com or I use local sim cards in the country I am in. They work perfectly and are the cheapest rates around. I alos use the unlocked cell phone with a sim card from tmobile in the united states. buying the card and refill it when the time is used is cheaper than any plan from the mobile carrieres and their locked phones.

From Jackson, Chicago, IL

T-Mobile has $0.99/minute from Western Europe every day. No $6/month extortion required. Nor would you require a special phone, as T-Mobile generally issues quad-band GSM phones which work pretty much anywhere in the world.

From B. Scherer, Hellertown, PA

We were talked into using an "international calling card" (Att, etc.), which we purchased at Walmarts for $25. Unfortunately, at most every hotel in 8 countries the card would not work. Their public phones seemed to be rigged not to work with cards because they want you to call from your room (about $50-$100) per call after all taxes, etc. One 3 minute call with our debit card resulted in a $40 charge! My advice would be to go to your cell provider and purchase a disposable phone for $10, prepay the minutes, and you're good to go. Some in our group did exactly that and it worked like a charm.