help with mobile phone in Spain/France

Housework*Fairy

Hi

My son is going on a school trip to France & Spain at the weekend for six days.

I phoned 3 to see if there was any bolt-on that we could buy for international use (there isn't) but they told me how much it would cost to use the phone/make calls/text/internet etc...

I'm fine with that

However I've read horror stories about people coming back from abroad to find they have accrued hundreds of pounds of charges even though they haven't used the internet at all.

So, wondering how we can avoid this happening to us?

He's a sensible lad and I have faith in him that he wont deliberately run up costs (i.e. by going on facebook despite being told not to) but I'm worried about accruing charges unknowingly. Anything we can do to safeguard ourselves against this?

Phone is a Blackberry Bold.

System

Make him take a basic phone that doesn't do data.

Buzby

Or use a PAYG handset that you can confirm will work abroad (O2's usually do). Load it with credit and off you go.

Im_just_careful

No, get a 3 PAYG SIM and change the SIM just before he leaves.

Top it up with, say, £10 and turn off the data over mobile (this seems to be how to do it).

http://docs.blackberry.com/en/smartphone_users/deliverables/11298/Turn_on_or_turn_off_data_service_50_880997_11.jsp

I managed to spend £5 on data with "3" in Spain on a few "emergency" web pages I needed to consult once.

If the Blackberry is unlocked, a Vodafone PAYG SIM is much better value to use for data abroad but it isn't really worth doing this for a school trip and even if you do I don't think most of the Blackberry features will work as you are on the "wrong" network.