Creative Cogitation

I started ask­ing about what do I do if I need to make a phone call while I am in Italy.

My travel agent sug­gested I con­tact my cel­lu­lar ser­vice provider, so I did.  My cur­rent cell phone is not GSM com­pat­i­ble.  I am not due to renew my plan for another 6 months or so, so the idea of renew­ing that early for 2 years, just to get a GSM com­pat­i­ble phone is not super attrac­tive.  I had decided the next go round I would get a phone that would be friendly for text mes­sag­ing; hit­ting a num­ber but­ton 3 times to pull up a let­ter is annoy­ing.  But in order to get a GSM phone with those abil­i­ties I would have to sign up for more than my cur­rent plan, I’d have to add email-it might not be a bad thing, but I have mul­ti­ple phones shar­ing min­utes and I am not sure how that plays out under the new plan.  The least expen­sive plan I saw was $99 a month which is $40 per month more than I am cur­rently pay­ing for my base plan and I don’t know how much more the other phones are going to run or even if it is pos­si­ble to have them share min­utes under the new sce­nario. This cost is in addi­tion to the $149 to $179 cost of the upgraded phone.  On top of that their roam­ing charge is $1.99 per minute in Italy.  All in all this looks to be a very pricey way to go, but as I said I have been think­ing about upgrad­ing my ser­vice any­way, just not quite so soon.  At a min­i­mum I will pay an extra $240 over the next sev­eral months that I would not have oth­er­wise paid and their roam­ing per minute fees are just about dou­ble the alternative.

The Alter­na­tive: A friend who lives in Italy sug­gested I pick up an inex­pen­sive unlocked GSM phone and get a charge­able SIM card for it.  My first foray into this idea found a ser­vice that offers a phone loaded with 30 min­utes for $179.  Alter­na­tively they sell the SIM card alone loaded with 30 min­utes for $59. This com­pany also rents cell phones, but I have heard there are expen­sive insur­ance con­tracts on rented cells so it is prob­a­bly just as cost effec­tive to buy one.  I can get an inter­na­tional call­ing card with non-expiring min­utes for my hus­band that will run $25. If he were to call me on this GSM phone my incom­ing call would be free and about 28 cents a minute to my hus­band on the call­ing card.  My out­bound calls would be about 99 cents a minute and free to him, which is half of the cost of my cur­rent cell ser­vice provider.  The GSM phone pur­chased this way does not require a plan or incur a future oblig­a­tion to me.  My cur­rent cel­lu­lar ser­vice does not sell unlocked phones so there is no way for me to upgrade my phone and use the recharge­able SIM with it.

Does any­one else have any ideas?

Yours in Art,

-Jake

Artist, AKAJake.com Come Expe­ri­ence the Art!

PS. I am still look­ing for Spon­sors & Con­tribut­ing Patrons to help me pay the esti­mated $8000 it is going to cost me to attend this event.  Every lit­tle bit helps.

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