I don't know what to do. Any advice? I have a LG L1200 GSM phone thru Cingular that I was planning to take on my trip to Italy(minimum usage, ie my kids calling me from the states or me calling them from Italy to check in, calling hotels in Italy if we have arrival problems). Here's my dilema...Cingular customer service by phone and website does not show my phone working in Italy because it says that Italy is on the 1800MHz band. My phone is on the 1900MHz band. But the Cingular store where I do my business and the GSMworld.com website says that Italy's cell phone partnership with Cingular operate on 1900MHz band so my phone should work! Does anyone have any advice or knowledge on this? I leave in a week and I'm starting to panic.

Italy operates on 900/1800 bands, so unless your phone is a tri-band phone it will not work there. You need to have an International capable phone, i.e. tri or quad band phone. Check the booklet that came with the phone and see if you have the other bands also, if you do, all you need to do is switch bands when you get there and it should work. If you do not, one way is to buy a used (or new) unlocked cell phone that supports these bands. When you get there you will switch your SIM card from your current phone to the new "unlocked" phone and it should work.

I share your anxiety. My husband has a quad-band phone from Cingular and we've been told by several people that it should/will work over there. However, I've also heard stories from friends about how they were told the same thing, only to find out that their phone did not work once they arrived.
I also heard that even with a converter, we may not be able to charge our cell phone due to differences in wattage or something?

I swear - it was almost easier when no one had cell phones and we actually had to depend on the good old fashioned phone booths.
Now I'm scared that those will be hard to come by!

Answers to a lot of your questions are on the website:
Europe Trip Planning - Cell Phones

Amyandjustin:

Maybe you needed to change the frequency when you got to Italy for the phone to work there? I am not sure but a quad band phone should definitely work in all the countries that use GSM, as it has all the available bands, 850/900/1800/1900.
Most phones these days can handle wattage from 100-250 so no need for a converter, however you would need an adapter to change the USA (North America) type plug to the other country's type plug. Some of the unlocked world phones actually come with adapters in the box. Also, just because a phone can be used internationally does not mean the provider has activated this feature, you have to ask your carrier to give you this feature before you travel. It is a security type feature that the carrier has control of.

Henry has pointed out something that is rarely mentioned - you have to be sure that your phone is operating on the right band or frequency. The settings for my Motorola, for example, are under "Network" and then "Region". Pauline, I hope you add this info to your cell phone page since I think it might be the source of the problems that some people have encountered.