For my past two internship trips, I have relied on pay phones and the generosity of employees at various business establishments, in order to stay connected with my current employer, while in transit. This method has worked well enough; however, in considering the extent of travel that I will be undertaking in the near future, I decided that purchasing a cell phone would be a better, safer, and more convenient option.
Unfortunately, it took me a few days to sort through the overwhelming amount of information online and the abundance of available products from which to choose. Afterwards, I only felt slightly more confident in my choice than I did when I first started looking because I won’t know how well my chosen phone and service work until I am actually overseas. It makes me nervous that I won’t be able to do much about a dysfunctional cell phone in the midst of my travels. I’ll let you know how it goes, but in the meantime, this is what I’ve learned that actually helped me to arrive at a decision.
If you already have a cell phone that you use in the U.S., you might be able to use it in foreign countries as well. However, you should check with your cell phone provider to determine if this is actually possible before you hop on that plane. Also, there are two important factors that you need to keep in mind, when considering this option. Firstly, just like our system of measurements, our cell phone frequency is different from that of the rest of the world, so a cell phone from a U.S. provider might be overloaded by this change. Secondly, your phone must be “unlocked”, or capable of being opened, in order to switch out your SIM card with one that accommodates the region of the globe, to which you will be traveling. You also might want to find out what extra charges and fees you will incur by using your cell phone outside of your service area.
For international cell phones, the two internet resources that I found most useful were the Better Business Bureau, which offers unbiased analysis and reviews of companies, and the International Cell Phone Guide, which provides a comparison of the main service providers and demonstrates how to choose the features that best fit your travel needs. These websites were truly invaluable, as I don’t trust the sincerity of the testimonials that companies have posted from “customers” on their own websites. These reviews are typically overly positive, and seem to lack unbiased opinions. Instead, I did a Google search for customer reviews on specific service providers, which led me to the above-mentioned websites, as well as travel advice sites, such as Frommer’s and Trip Advisor, which I felt to be more insightful information from the experiences of real, objective customers. However, no company is ever going to be perfect and it becomes difficult to determine which one is worth the risk.
The International Cell Phone Guide really breaks things down and explains what it calls the “five areas of differences” that will aid you in identifying the best fit. These include rental or purchase, local or global SIM card, pre-pay or post-pay billing, call-back or direct-dial service, and SIM card only or SIM card and handset. Each section has its own chart to compare differences, and there is also a chart and web diagram with the overall comparisons, which are visual tools that I found far more useful than all of the other written information that I had previously located.
The only factor that this guide doesn’t delve into much is price, so you’ll have to do this on your own. For example, a cell phone and SIM card package deal may be slightly cheaper from one provider to another for a similar coverage area, but its calling rates might be higher. Oftentimes, this is justified by a provider’s ability to offer better quality and more reliable service to its customers compared to its competitors, but again, we don’t really know for sure until we have experienced it for ourselves, or at least are acquainted with someone who has used that provider. Another pricing issue to watch for is whether or not you need to pay to keep your cell phone number and service active, when you’re not traveling, so be careful to read between the lines when you are seriously considering a specific provider.
I hope that this information will prove to be useful and, perhaps, make your travel planning slightly less stressful!
Update: Shortly after writing this post, I chose the UK-based provider, Mobal, because it seemed to best fit my needs. Unfortunately, the cost for a minute of talk time outside of the UK is quite steep. I also recently learned that they charge when someone leaves a voice message (even if it’s just the click of the phone, you’re charged for a full minute) and to retrieve these messages. This partially explained why my current bill was outrageous (I say partially because I don’t even have my voice mailbox set up, so I don’t think that people could leave me messages anyways.), in addition to outgoing calls to a UK number that doesn’t even exist in my call register (for which Mobal is avoiding my questions). So there you have it. You can draw your own conclusions from there.
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