Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Types of Phones
You'll encounter various kinds of phones on your trip:
Card-operated phones,
in which you insert a locally bought
phone card into a public pay phone, are common in the Czech
Republic.
Coin-operated phones,
the
original kind of pay phone (but
now increasingly rare),
require you to have enough change to
complete your call.
Hotel room phones
are sometimes cheap for local calls (con-
firm at the front desk first), but can be a rip-off for long-distance
calls unless you use an international phone card (described below).
However, incoming calls are free, making this a cheap way for
friends and family to stay in touch, provided they have a good
long-distance plan for calls to Europe.
American
mobile phones
work in Europe if they're GSM-
enabled, tri-band, or quad-band, and on a calling plan that
includes international calls. They're convenient but pricey. For
example, with a T-Mobile phone, you'll pay $1 per minute for calls
and about $0.35 for text messages.
European mobile phones
run about $90 (for the most basic
models) and come without contracts. These phones are loaded with
prepaid calling time that you can recharge as you use up the min-
utes. As long as you're not “roaming” outside the phone's home
country, incoming calls are free. If you're traveling to multiple
countries within Europe, make sure the phone is electronically
“unlocked,” so that you can swap out its SIM card (a fingernail-
sized chip that holds the phone's information) for a new one in
other countries. For more information on mobile phones, see www
.ricksteves.com/phones.
Using Phone Cards
Get a phone card for your calls. Prepaid cards come in two types:
international phone cards and insertable phone cards. Both are
described below.
Prepaid
international phone cards
are the cheapest way to
make international calls from Europe—calls to the US generally
cost 10-40 cents per minute—and they also work for domestic
calls.
Currently the only brand w idely available in the Czech Republic
is
Smartcall
(look for a black-and-orange advertisement),
which you
can buy at newsstands, exchange bureaus, Internet cafés, hostels,
souvenir shops, and mini-marts in tourist towns such as Prague
or Český Krumlov (they're not available in less touristy towns like
Olomouc). The cards come in denominations of 150 Kč, 300 Kč, 500
Kč, and 1,000 Kč. Because they're occasionally duds, avoid the high
denominations. Cards purchased in the Czech Republic will work
