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Old 01-27-2013, 12:52 AM
 
Location: Sunshine Coast, QLD
3,674 posts, read 3,025,026 times
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Forgive my ignorance please, on this, but I'm not sure what to do. I'll be moving to Australia next week, and will eventually get a cell phone locally, but not sure what to do in the meantime. I'm with Sprint, and I know when i land in Australia, my cell phone will be no good as far as calling. Is there anything I can do until I get my local carrier, in order to avoid those $2 per min int'l charges? Thanks!!
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Old 01-27-2013, 11:06 AM
 
Location: Manhattan
1,871 posts, read 4,256,734 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by LeaveWI View Post
Forgive my ignorance please, on this, but I'm not sure what to do. I'll be moving to Australia next week, and will eventually get a cell phone locally, but not sure what to do in the meantime. I'm with Sprint, and I know when i land in Australia, my cell phone will be no good as far as calling. Is there anything I can do until I get my local carrier, in order to avoid those $2 per min int'l charges? Thanks!!
Are you under contract with Sprint? What type of phone do you have? You could call up Sprint to see if they will unlock it to be used with a local carrier in Australia.

If that isn't possible, then I wouldn't even take that phone with me if I would incur international roaming charges. It would be much cheaper to pay the ETF (if you have one) and just get a new phone in Australia. It takes like 20 minutes to get a new cell phone so you won't be without one for long.
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Old 01-31-2013, 04:44 PM
 
Location: On the East Coast
2,361 posts, read 4,856,686 times
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I totally agree with barkomatic! In fact, we were only visiting for 3 weeks and we bought a cheap cell phone from Vodaphone to use while we were there and it was worth the effort. Much more reasonable than taking our own phone. And you can recharge your SIM card with minutes just about anywhere. We got ours reasonably priced at a drugstore! And, at least at that time, it was actually cheaper to call international than long distance within the country! I still own the phone and if we ever go back, or even go to Britain again, I will take it with me and just get a new SIM card and an electrical adapter.

Just a bit of warning......I purchased what was supposed to be a "new unlocked" phone on ebay from a place in California. When we got there and went to get a SIM card from Vodaphone, it wouldn't work. They directed us to a guy who services phones and he discovered that apparently it had water damage inside! I did manage to get my money back, only by threatening them with turning them into Paypal or the California AG if necessary, at a later time. So beware of where you get your unlocked phone. This was about 10 years ago, so maybe it's better.

I'm so jealous of you! We absolutely loved Australia and the people there are just about the nicest and most wonderful people you will find anywhere...at least to Americans. I currently live in the south (moved here from PA) and the Australians run rings around the people here.
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