Beyond silly Cell phone ? from techno phobe

bethey

I can't believe I'm asking this but...

I'm chatting with one of my coworkers who'll be touring Greece in March and we're both a bundle of excited, gee-Im-going-away-soon nerves and she asks this wild question -

If I take my cell phone with me but leave it off the whole time and someone calls me and leaves a voicemail, will that be considered international call time? In other words, would a phone that isn't on "know" it's in Europe or Asia or where ever?

Ok - why would we take a phone and leave it off, you ask? A couple of reasons - for contact address info and in order to call our car services when we reach the airport coming home.

Like I said, silly. But now we both are curious and the customer service with our carrier [Verizon] isn't being helpful.

Thanks!

Nick-H

My Guess...

No. Because the voicemail is left on your national provider's server in your country. Nothing international about it.

You will only pay international charges when you (abroad) dial up your voice mail (at home) to listen to it.

Your provider will not know where you are as long as you keep your phone turned off. But, assuming that you have international roaming permitted on your account, as soon as you turn it on it will seek a local network, and that local network will let your home provider know that this is where you are.

It may even be possible (I dimly remember from traveling with a British SIM back in 2003) to redirect all your calls to your voicemail. Let people SMS you if it is urgent.

But make sure you have your voicemail set up so that you can dial it from abroad.

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IndiaMike Mod Team (The Grumpy One)

shere

Yes just set it up in your divert menu to divert to voicemail for all calls.

Anders

Make sure the phone is set up to divert all calls. Do not set it it to divert on no answer etc or you can not only be charged for an international phone call from your country to where you are but also for the call from where you are back to your voicemail in your country!

Zoeperman

As long as you don't check your voicemail messages, you won't be charged for it.
You can even leave your phone on and just not answering it.
Then the only thing you have to be carefull about is that people can send you textmessages, which you will be charged for.

nycank

I think Verizon is CDMA in US; If your phone does not have GSM Sim; and in Greece there are no CDMA providers who have roaming agreements with Verizon, then you will not be charged for roaming since there is no network available. On the other hand, Verizon Wireles has a international roaming service through its Vodaphone partner for which a GSM aware cell phone is needed. Check Verizonwireless website for details.