I'm now back on the board and I'll try to explain the "double minute" situation that people were questioning. This happened initially on my first trip overseas with Cingular. I phoned Cingular after receiving a huge bill upon my return. The CS person agreed that it was not spelled out, even in the fine print, but was evidently happening is that when someone in the US calls me while I'm in Europe, Cingular has no control as to which European networks the call is routed on. If it is routed on a network with which Cingular does not have a preferential agreement, Cingular has to pay a higher fee and hence charges me the other carrier's fee plus its own roaming fee. I think that in some cases the fees from the other carrier didn't appear with the Cingular roaming one. The bills were a mess (and still are). As I was a new customer, the CS gave me a credit for 1/2 the charges and gave me 300 bonus minutes per month (which I still have).

As for turning off my voice mail, I believe I've always called Cingular.

I'm heading over in two weeks, and will be doing the same but in addition, I now have a SkypeOut account which I'll use on my ultraportable which has built in WiFi (and Bluetooth for my headset). The cost is 2.1 cents per minute, plus a 3.9 cent setup, for calling most industrialized countries -- from anywhere in the world with an internet connection. Note that when calling European cell phones, there is a still charge of something like 20 cents a minute no matter what phone you are using to call.