May 11, 2005

Keep Your Cell Phone Working Around The World

When traveling outside of the United States, there is no guarantee that your cell phone will work unless you are prepared. If your cell phone will work or not, depends in large part on who provides your cell phone to you: Verizon or Sprint (their technology works pretty much only in the US and a small selection of a few other countries) or Cingular or T-Mobile. There's two things that will affect your phone working overseas - the network it uses (GSM or CDMA) and the frequency.

USA Today's Mark Saltzman writes Most carriers require users to activate a phone for international use by calling customer service or stopping by a retail store. Be sure to find out the carrier's roaming rates and long-distance fees.

Bill Hague, executive vice president international at Cingular, has a tip for world travelers: "To save money, use your phone's text-messaging feature instead of voice communication."

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