These are the cards that I have found, in no particular order.  I will add to this post as I find more.

• OneSimCard
• 
• aether Mobile Global Roaming International Cell SIM Card
• 
• Pangea Global Travel Prepaid SIM Card
• SmartFree SIM card
• oomobile Global Travel Sim
• Mobal World SIM
• 
• ekit Global Premium Service
• ekit Passport Service
• 
• ekit Passport Plus
• Go-SIM
• Global Traveller Sim
• Matrix International Travel Sim Card (from India)
• 0044 Global Sim Card
• SIM4travel
• National Geographic Talk Abroad SIM Card by Cellular Abroad
• 
• GSM Travel SIM
• United Mobile (appears to be out of business?)
• Swiftnet TravelSIM
• OOMobile Travel Sim

I will try to take the time to produce a comparison table with whatever information I can find.  In the mean time, I will continue adding to the list as I find more.  If you have any ideas, please send them to me. [contact-form]

There are two main mobile cell phone companies in New Zealand, Telecom and Vodafone.  An up-and-coming 3rd company is 2 Degrees Telecom.

This rate comparison chart hosted on iphonewzealand is simple to read and comprehensive.  The only thing that it doesn’t include is the cost of the sim card, which would make a difference for a short term visitor.

So, here are the sim card prices:

• Telcom XT: 29.95 (includes NZ$10.00 credit).
• Vodafone: NZ$ 29.95
• 2 Degrees: NZ$5.00 (includes NZ$3 of credit).

T-Mobile Cards at Walmart

Here is our review of T-Mobile Prepaid Service.  T-Mobile is the fourth largest cell phone operator in the U.S., and is owned by Deutsche Telekom, the German national telephone company www.telekom.com. They operate all over the country, on GSM bands 850 and 1900.  Skimming their website, at www.t-mobile.com , as of the date of this post, the pre-paid kit consisting of a sim card, support documentation, and $3.34 usage credit, cost $6.99.  There are several prepaid handsets, ranging from about $20 to about $50.  All are dual band 850/1900 except for the $50 Samsung t349 which adds the 1800 band, to make it a triband.

The top-ups can be done by retail card purchase, in $10, $25, $50 and $100 denominations, or over the phone itself, if T-Mobile has your credit card on file.  There is a gold status, which is obtained after spending $100 on refills.  If on gold status, the next refill qualifies for a 15% bonus in minutes.  Here are the rates as of the date of this post.  The last column shows the rates on gold status.  Buying a $100 refill card automatically qualifies you for gold status, and minutes are good for a year, otherwise they expire after 90 days.

There is no data plan for pay as you go, but there is SMS text messaging and MMS picture messaging.  Texts are $0.10 to send, and $.05 to receive.  Picture MMS is $.25  to  send and receive.  There are international rates as well as roaming in Canada and Mexico.

Pay by the Day

There is another prepaid plan that T-Mobile offers, and it’s called Pay by the Day.  With this plan, you are charged $1 each day that you use the phone.  For this dollar, you receive unlimited voice calling between 7PM and 7AM, and $0.10 per minute at other times.  SMS and MMS rates are the same as pay as you go.

Sidekick

This is the third plan.  For $1 per day, you get unlimited text messaging, and a call rate of $0.15 per minute.  Neither the Pay by the Day, nor the Sidekick plans offer the gold rewards.

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.

The phone that I bought was originally sold by the U.S. company AT&T.  It has AT&T branding on the phone, and in the start-up graphics.  In order to check to see if this phone was indeed unlocked, I purchased a T-Mobile prepaid sim card on the web site.  If this worked, then I could conclude that the phone was indeed unlocked.

I ordered the sim card over the T-Mobile web site over the weekend, and it arrived by UPS truck on Thursday.  I immediately placed it in the phone that I purchased, and tried to activate it online.  The web site told me that the activation code that came with the card was invalid, and to call to activate.

So, I called to activate the phone.  First using the automated voice system, which didn’t work, and then through a live person.  As it turns out, this didn’t work either.  I waited a full day (they told me it may take as long as 2 hours) and called back.  The new person said that he would submit it again.  Again, 24 hours, nothing.  I called back again, and after speaking with 6 different representatives, finally got it activated.  Verified it by making a call, and sending a text.

The phone, an LG CU500v, which is quad-band, was supposedly unlocked.  What I’ve learned is that in most of the world, people purchase a phone first, and then connect it to the service of their choice, with the majority using pre-paid services.  Here in the U.S., most use a post-paid billing system, with a phone in which the purchase price has been subsidized by the carrier — usually for a 2 year contract.

When the phone is subsidized like this, the phone company sells you the phone with what is called a “sim lock”.  This means that the phone will only accept a sim card for the one company.  Placing a sim card from another company will render the phone inoperative.  Unlocking the phone requires a set of codes, one of which is individual for the telephone itself.  Once unlocked, sim cards from any carrier will work, even in other countries.  CDMA phones, from Verizon and Sprint in the U.S. and a number of other countries, don’t use sim cards.

There is also another kind of lock, called a “feature lock”.  This is sometimes done by the phone company when a particular feature, like multimedia texting or internet tethering, is deemed to put too much demand on phone bandwidth resources.  If you pay one fee for unlimited SMS and internet, you are more likely to see feature locks put on your phones.  There are ways around them, but I have no experience with these.

We had relatives in the UK who couldn’t get ahold of us, and the same with a friend in Paris.  Our cell phones from the USA wouldn’t function on any of the networks in Europe, as our cell provider, Sprint, uses the incompatible CDMA connecting technology.

Simple lack of information about how GSM phones work, and having limited time in Europe to shop around, we did without.  However, I have recently purchased a used, unlocked quad-band GSM phone from Ebay, and have been spending some time learning about it.

After a time consuming web search, I found that there was no one place where information about traveling with your phone could be found.  So, I decided to create one.

For now, I will post my information with wordpress blogging software.  Later, I may move it to a different platform.

If you have any information that you would like to add, please email me at simcardinfo (at) gmail.com.