lydia

We bought a prepaid phone in Germany last September and topped up with 25 euros. We never used the 25 euros. All the paper work is is German and with Babel Fish Translation couldn't find anything as to an expiration date.

We are leaving for Paris, FR in 5 days and wondering how we can find out if the money we paid in Sept. is still there. I went to Vodafone's website but couldn't find a customer service number.

Does anyone know how long the money stays in the account or how to contact them to find out? I don't even know the phone number the phone was assigned because even though I can turn the phone on, there is no service here in the US.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

TIA
Lydia

ScottC

Without knowing what prepaid plan the sim is on it's hard to tell, but I'm going to go ahead and guess that it was no more than 6 months.

But why would you want to use a German sim in France anyway? The cost for making calls when roaming on a prepaid sim are far higher than the cost of just getting a new sim when in Paris.

I assume you don't have a US sim you can use?

ScottC

I stand corrected: it's 15 months.

Prepaid roaming calls are € 0.99 or € 1.49 per minute in most European countries (the cheaper rate is only if you are on a partner Vodafone network), however; that rate is ONLY if you call another European country, calls to the US are a whopping € 3.49 per minute.

Like I said; Get a French sim, or bring your US card.

lydia

The plan is called "CallYa". I was going to use the phone for just local calls in Paris and just to use up whatever is on the phone.

I tried to get the phone unlocked, but that was impossible.

If it is 15 months that would be great.

ScottC

One other thing: you SHOULD be able to roam in the US, were you using a tri or quadband cellphone to get onto a US network? If the phone you were using is only Dualband (European bands) then it won't work in the US.

opus17

If I have a CallYa card, can I use my phone as a modem (bluetooth/serial)? I have an iPass number for Germany which I can use --- but I assume there may be also a data service available? Anyone try this with prepaid SIMs in Germany, Vodafone or otherwise?

lydia

I have no idea. Took the battery out and nothing mentioned there. It is a Motorola C121. I did a search for the model, but nothing came up.

lydia

Just did another search - it's a dual band.

Gargoyle

They have four different CallYa plans listed on their German site, so you'll have to poke around to see which one you have, and waht calls cost inside France. Those pages have a link to a .pdf with tariff info.

You might also want to check out the forums at prepaidgsm.net for info and advice on prepaid sim cards, and to find out how to get a French card.

tbird2000

Not quite. It should be able to roam on T-Mobile here, since they operate exclusively on the 1900 Mhz band. Almost all European phones will have 900 and 1900 Mhz. They will not have the 850 band, but in the case of T-Mobile it will not matter.

ScottC

That is simply not true.

There are 100's of phones for the European market that are GSM900/1800 only.

Triband phones are more common than they used to be, but it's not 100% accurate to say that they "almost all have 1900", in the OP's case for example, her phone is GSM900 and 1800 only.

In fact, on the CallYa page of Vodafone.de there isn't a SINGLE phone on sale that does more than GSM 900/1800.

There are even plenty of examples of things the other way around with some of the prepaid phones on Cingular, that'll only do GSM850/1900.

Especially on prepaid phones it is still very common to have a dualband phone.

tbird2000

I checked on gsmworld.com, and indeed 1900 Mhz seems to be rare on European networks, so logically many phones would not have it...

I guess I was so used to seeing the 1900 band on phones from dealers I assumed it would be present.

ScottC

Actually, GSM 1900 isn't RARE in Europe, it's not on a single network. All of Europe is GSM900 and/or 1800.

GSM 900 was the original GSM network frequency, in the mid 90's the first licenses were awarded for what was then called DCS, later GSM1800.

Later most GSM900 networks ran out of capacity and added overlay GSM1800 networks. So the networks that started on GSM1800 are 100% 1800 and the networks that started out on GSM900 now have a mix of both.

With most of the networks that operate on both, the GSM900 portion is mainly in the rural areas and along highways while their 1800 portion of spectrum is mainly used in cities to add capacity to their old(er) 900 network.

Of course, to make things complicated some countries are working on converting their old NMT450 networks into GSM450 networks.

tbird2000

A solution for the world traveler then should be to buy one high-quality quad-band handset, and be set for some time to come - unless you run into a 450-only area....

ScottC

You won't run into anything 450 only.

But if you want a TRUE worldphone you'll need one that does GSM AND WCDMA. That way it'll work in NA, Europe AND most of Asia.