PAYG with eye to international usage...

[peters4n6]

Forgive me but I am at a loss. I am a regular Verizon customer (Family plan) and never have had to think about anything other than paying my bills. Lo and behold I need to go to a rural location for a short spell without internet/wifi where they say only T-Mobile and ATT work, so I figured I'd pick up a cheap T-Mobile PAYG phone so I can keep in contact with home. Overall, I expect to be at this location 7-10 in the next year. Suddenly, I might need to go to Europe within the next 6-12 months and likely more than once. Primarily Germany and Austria, but maybe even Switzerland or Spain.

Should I get a PAYG smartphone for my minimal US-based needs and then I'll have it for Europe?
Compatibility issues?
Costs?
Recommendations?

I guess what I want is a one-stop, but as inexpensive as possible, ability to have a phone that works in the rural US area I need to go to that will (with a SIM card) be seamlessly useful to me in Europe.

Thanks

[Chop-Chop]

For the rural area in question, make sure you are using the pre-paid maps for coverage and not the post-paid maps. They are different.

[Telekom]

Forgive me but I am at a loss. I am a regular Verizon customer (Family plan) and never have had to think about anything other than paying my bills. Lo and behold I need to go to a rural location for a short spell without internet/wifi where they say only T-Mobile and ATT work, so I figured I'd pick up a cheap T-Mobile PAYG phone so I can keep in contact with home. Overall, I expect to be at this location 7-10 in the next year. Suddenly, I might need to go to Europe within the next 6-12 months and likely more than once. Primarily Germany and Austria, but maybe even Switzerland or Spain.

Should I get a PAYG smartphone for my minimal US-based needs and then I'll have it for Europe?
Compatibility issues?
Costs?
Recommendations?

I guess what I want is a one-stop, but as inexpensive as possible, ability to have a phone that works in the rural US area I need to go to that will (with a SIM card) be seamlessly useful to me in Europe.

Thanks

You want to get a "quad band" phone as that will work in North America as well as in Europe. After you've been a T-Mobile customer for 90 days you can ask for an unlock code and you can use a European SIM in it.

[stufried]

For Germany, I am using a roaming SIM from freetimetele.com. It is a German MVNO that gives you good rates to German landlines and the US. Their rates to mobiles are high. They also give you a US number which you can divert your US number to. It is 9 euro cents a minute for incoming calls on the US number in Germany. In Switzerland, it is 5 euro cents for incoming on both the US and German numbers. Download MobileVOIP and put 10 Euros every ninety days on VOIPCheap.com. You can use their dial through in Germany to call the US for 5 Euro cents a minute, you can use it to reduce the rates to German mobiles, and you can use the callback mode in Switzerland to bring the price down.

If I were in your situation, I'd buy a TMobile for the US. Put $100 on it to get the one year validity on the card. Flip on the $2 a day unlimited option when you are in the deadzone and flip it off when you leave. I would echo the comments that others made about making sure that you are on their prepaid network. If it is a rural cellular carrier, you could easily have contract roaming, but not prepaid roaming on that network.