Okay, so by now, you know that you need an unlocked quad band GSM phone for world-wide travel. The question now is, what about the sim card. What kind do I need?
My research has narrowed it down to three different possibilities: roaming with your home carrier, using a global sim card, or buying a country specific sim card. I will try to discuss these in turn.
If you roam on your home sim card, you have certain advantages, first, you keep your original telephone number so you are easily contactable. If your business requires you to be available by phone, then this may be your only option. Second, there is no need to constantly change out sim cards, learn new pricing plans, and top-up minutes with foreign currencies and foreign instructions. Roaming is expensive on a per minute basis, and may require you to contact your home cell phone company to enable global roaming on your phone.
Using a global sim card, you have the ability to phone from numerous countries, at a cost lower than roaming. However, the telephone number to which you are assigned may be in another country, and the cost on a per minute basis is still pretty expensive, and may vary depending on the country that you’re calling from and the one you are calling to, making the rate charts complicated.
A country specific sim card is usually the cheapest option, and gives you a local telephone number for others in the country to contact you easily. Obtaining a sim card can be as simple as putting coins in a vending machine, or may be as complicated as needing to register your identity (to combat terrorism), or to even register it to a local resident.
In my later blog posts, I will try to discuss each option, with major emphasis on the country specific offerings. If you have any experience with a country, please e-mail me simcardinfo (at) gmail.com and I will post it.