I'm going to be spending the summer in Europe (France and Italy with some likely detours to AMS and maybe the UK) and I'm one of those poor unfortunate Verizon wireless customers.

Deciding that since Verizon screwed me on the matter i'm certainly not giving them any more money I'm shopping for an unlocked GSM phone and looking at a SIM to go along with it.

I think I found a phone I like - any opinions of the Nokia N73? It seems to be a cost-effective solution to get a quad-band GSM phone with decent camera and video capabilities. It occured to me in the shopping process that I likely wont want to carry around my SLR but I certainly will want some random shots of the places I wander into.

Next up, the SIM card- any thoughts or experience with Telestial? I don't know if their pricing is good or not, but they offer a service that tracks you on a google map and makes a little blog that you can even post photos to from your phone. I'm sure all these bits are possible other ways and by other means but I've not seen them easily bundled and offered along with airtime.

Any thoughts?

I have the N73 and used it mostly for travel in the past few years. The phone works great and I've used it almost everywhere.

The camera function is pretty useless. So I'm back to carrying different phones and cameras.

I to have used the N73 for my phone. I have also used Telestial, The company is a complete rip off. They charge to much for the sim cards. It is also hard to top up the sim card from them. If you are going to Europe look at www.prepaidgsm.net.
They have all the information for local sim card, and International cards. I use local sim cards in the country I am in. I find it better for me to do that. I have used international cards, but they are becoming more trouble than they are worth. A lot of them are going out of business. If you are looking for a N73 phone look at www.importgsm.com. They are a little more expensive, but I gotten nothing, but great service from them. ^ Hope this helps you.

As already mentioned, telestial is very expensive and their sim cards rates are very high. The site mentioned above has reviews on several international cards. Of all the international sim cards I have used, United Mobile's UM+ is the most consistent and reliable. The rest keep changing or have totally ceased to function. Obviously, for any extended stay in one country, a local sim is your best bet. Even if you you will be in any EU countries, you can just roam with the local sim from your first country, since the rates are not too bad these days.

Thanks for the input. I think i was tired and the ease of the whole process through telestial looked like a good offer before i compared rates.

And from the looks of it, i'm going to have the give in and do camera+phone, bleh :P

I have also been very happy with United Mobile, both in terms of the phone working and customer service.