Originally Posted by jg70124

In plain English: if you want to use your cell phone outside the US, you must have a quad-band (or "world") phone, and you must be on Cingular or T-Mobile.

To get email on that phone, you need a phone that has data capabilities. Choices include Blackberry; Palm devices like the Treo 650; Windows devices like the TyTN, Dash, or Treo 750; Symbian devices like the Nokia; or the Sidekick.

You will also need a data plan. There are two flavors of data plans: Blackberry and everything else. Blackberry plans cost $20 on T-Mobile and $30 on Cingular. For everything else, T-Mobile charges $30/month (includes WiFi); Cingular charges $20/month.

Finally, you will need international data roaming. For the Blackberry, Tmobile has unlimited international data for an additional $20/month; Cingular's is $35/month. For everything else, Tmobile charges 1.5 cents per kb and Cingular charges 1.9 cents per kb. A typical short email might be ~10kb, so if you get 20 emails a day, and are out of the country for a week, and don't do any web browsing, and don't download any attachments, your bill will be about $10/week for TMO and $13/week for Cingular.