January 28, 2008

Can You Talk Around the World On A "World" Phone

For those of you who trot around the globe on a regular basis, you already know the perils of trying to use a cell phone, well your own cell phone, internationally. For those of you who will be traveling quite a bit around the world and want to ensure you can effectively communicate in any country, Forbes has a very good primer on this here.

There's two important things to realize. 1) What cellular technology your phone uses - GSM or CDMA and 2) is your phone locked or unlocked.

Around the world, most cellular technology is GSM, not CDMA. So make sure iyou have a GSM phone (Verizon uses CDMA by the way) that is tri-band so that it can utilize all flavors of GSM around the world.

You might have jealously seen people swap in and out SD cards on their phones to change billing options or add more minutes to the phone. This only works if your phone is unlocked. Ask your carrier about it - it's not that hard for them to do, if they want to.

Other options include:

• Renting a phone in the country you'll be in is one option
• Using a broadband Internet connection to call via Skype
• Using a phone card

tags: cell phone , cellular phone , mobile computing | 0 comments