cell phones for multiple countries

[greg nice]

basically i live in usa and have a verizon account. supposedly my phone is locked and not GSM or whatever and wont work anywhere

say i plan on travelling 3 months in australia, 3 months in europe, etc what are my options? vodafone seems to have roaming to diff countries. someone else suggested i get an unlocked phone and buy sim cards or something at each country i get to.

please sort me out. i have no clue about this

[TheMetetron]

Buy an unlocked GSM phone. Whatever country you are in at the time, go to the big cell phone company's store and purchase a SIM card for using prepaid minutes with. In most countries, receiving calls will be free and you will be charged a reasonable rate per minute to call (with text messages generally being free to receive and much cheaper than calls to send).

This is what I do and it is by far the best solution. If you are like me and save your SIM cards after you leave, be sure to remember when they will expire (usually you have to add credit once every 6 months or it is no longer any good).

Edit: This advice is for making local calls. For international calls, use Skype with your computer or a similar service.

[slickss]

Yeah, I do the same as TheMetetron. Get an unlocked phone, either by buying a new one or by unlocking the one you have. Depending on how old your mobile phone is, you could be able to just ask your provider for a code that unlocks it.

Prepaid pay-as-you-go SIM cards is the best solution if you're just looking at a few weeks or months. All countries should have them.

[greg nice]

thanks guys

i also found this site which was a great help to explain alll the technologies

http://www.telestial.com/getting_started_part1.php

[slickss]

[ QUOTE ]
Also you can get pretty cool phones overseas, seems America is always two+ years behind the technological times...you'll be blown away what you can get your cell to do if you buy it in a country like Japan. Then you can take this uber-badass phone back to the USA, get Verizon to give you a sim card for your number and now the USA is but another SIM card in the mixed bag that you have.

[/ QUOTE ]

I find it interesting to compare the 3 big regions in communication technology.

Japan: Implements state-of-the-art technology extremely fast. Results in a high gadget-factor, but is often based on immature and buggy technology. Impressive, but not necessarily working very well.

Europe: Waits a few years. Sees what works in Japan and allows it to mature before it is deployed. Creators of GSM and 3G.

USA: Lags behind both Europe and Japan with its trend of "inventing" technology that is almost similar to older technology already deployed in Europe/Japan.

[ElliotR]

[ QUOTE ]
I find it interesting to compare the 3 big regions in communication technology.

Japan: Implements state-of-the-art technology extremely fast. Results in a high gadget-factor, but is often based on immature and buggy technology. Impressive, but not necessarily working very well.

Europe: Waits a few years. Sees what works in Japan and allows it to mature before it is deployed. Creators of GSM and 3G.

USA: Lags behind both Europe and Japan with its trend of "inventing" technology that is almost similar to older technology already deployed in Europe/Japan.

[/ QUOTE ]

3G was created in Europe????? Ummm, no. Your "interesting" comparison seems to have left you sadly misinformed.

[Berliner Baer]

And if you don't have a computer around for Skype, you can still make international calls with those local prepaid-SIMs at the price of calling a local landline with services like rebtel.com (or similar), if you travel to countries covered by them.

Rebtel basically runs local call-in numbers in a bunch of countries and then connects people for free (how-to: the called party has to hang up and call right back at the local number shown. The caller has to hold the line until the call is connected again).

Another advantage might be for you: If your cellphone number changes in another country to a different prepaid-SIM, you simply change that number in your rebtel-account and your buddies abroad will still reach you under the same local Rebtel-number you gave them.

Yeah, it might sound confusing at first, but it's not. And this callback-system is free anyhow, so worth a try perhaps.

I used this until a few months ago extensively and it worked great. Saved us a ton of money, as my GF had no computer-access and intl. cellphone-to-cellphone sadly costs a fortune between Germany and Switzerland.

[slickss]

[ QUOTE ]
3G was created in Europe????? Ummm, no. Your "interesting" comparison seems to have left you sadly misinformed.

[/ QUOTE ]
Where do you claim it was invented then?

Try this and browse down to the entry 1991-1995.

1991 - 1995 two CEC funded research projects called Code Division Testbed (CODIT) and Advanced Time Division Multiple Access (ATDMA) were carried out by the major European telecom manufacturers and network operators. The CODIT and ATDMA projects investigated the suitability of wideband Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) and Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) based radio access technology for 3G systems. This work was later continued in the FRAMES (Future Radio Wideband Multiple Access System) project and became the basis of the further ETSI UMTS work until decisions were taken in 1998.