Richard; Yup.... It's the only way to ensure I'm reachable at a decent cost.

Also at peak times some of the US networks cannot forward calls to you in Europe (circuit capacity issues), Cingular is the WORST for this as they still use Sprint long distance which has major capacity problems on dialing or forwarding to Europe mobile networks.

When you are roaming internationally, there is NO excuse for the phone to not ring within 5 seconds. Any further delay is due to call re-routing on saturated networks (long distance).

Seems AT&T long distance has VERY few such issues.

Dialing my US Cingular number while in France for example may have taken 2 or 3 attempts and if it did ring, only after 15 seconds or so. Sometimes the caller would just hung up thinking the call isn't going through.

So far on AT&T - if I do happen to use my SIM while in France ; takes under 5 seconds to ring and always goes through.

Others in the company with T-mobile accounts report good results. Better than with Cingular.

Sounds like I'm bashing on Cingular... you bet - I was a customer for 5 years and they still couldn't sort out international roaming rates OR call quality when roaming internationally. AT&T and T-Mobile have the right approach (and quality when roaming), however I'm sure their rates could be a little better. After all roaming within Europe (with a Europe SIM card) is dirt cheap BUT calls from Europe to the US are sometimes cheaper than Intra-Europe calls. In a perfect world you should then at least see roaming a US number in Europe as not being more than triple the long distance calling rate (plenty of margin to all sides)... but alas the US networks seems a little greedy right now.


[This message has been edited by NickP 1K (edited 04-07-2003).]