Traveler's Resources

Cell Phone Options While Traveling

By Craig Oberlin

When you're traveling on a dive trip internationally, a cell phone is rapidly changing from being a convenience to being an essential item providing you connectivity back home to stay in touch with work and more importantly loved ones. Unfortunately, most of the time, your home cell phone isn't going to work elsewhere in the world.

To maintain cell phone service while abroad, you have several options. The best option for you will depend on your travel frequency and the amount of effort you want to expend.

• Buy an international plan from your current service provider. Not always available, easy to do, expensive roaming rates.
• Rent an international cell phone at the airport. Not always available and expensive.
• Take advantage of the local cell phone rates in the country or countries where you'll be traveling by purchasing prepaid calling SIM cards.

In order to properly evaluate your options, let's begin by examining a little of the underlying technology.

GSM

Outside of the United States and a handful of countries, the world's cell phone carriers operate on a unified standard called GSM (Global System for Mobile connectivity). The GSM standard requires a GSM cell phone and a SIM card. The SIM card is a small chip that allows your phone to connect with a local wireless carrier in the country you are visiting

There are currently four different frequency bands used by GSM cell phones. Most countries outside of the US use a combination of the 900 MHz and 1800 MHz frequency bands. Unfortunately, here in the US, we use a combination of the 850 MHz and 1900 MHz frequency bands (Cingular and T-Mobile being the primary U.S. based GSM carriers.)

GSM cell phones are available in dual-band, tri-band and quad-band models. A dual band (900 and/or1800 MHz) cell phone is adequate if you only need service in overseas networks including Europe, Africa, Australia, New Zealand and all of Asia except for Japan and South Korea. If you desire to use your cell phone in North America as well as overseas, a tri-band cell phone (850/1800/1900 MHz) or quad-band (850/900/1800/1900 MHz) is the best choice.

SIM Cards

The second component you require is a SIM card. The SIM card basically "identifies" your phone and associates with your cell phone carrier. In the US, most carriers configure the cell phone to only accept their SIM card, called "locking". Although there may be other reasons, the primary reason is to dissuade you from switching carriers.

If you want international cell service, you will need a cell phone that is GSM SIM-unlocked and it should work on at least the 900 and 1800 GSM frequencies. This will provide you the greatest flexibility by allowing you to switch out SIM Cards for the networks in the various countries you are visiting.

While some misinformation abounds, it is NOT illegal to unlock your phone. According to Wikipedia, ". . . in most countries it is either mandatory or voluntary for the provider to unlock the customer's mobile phone. However, some providers, including the former AT&T Wireless, never unlock handsets, even after a customer has fulfilled their service contract. Other providers, for example T-Mobile and more recently Cingular, will unlock phones if the customer has an active account in good standing for at least 90 days." If your carrier won't unlock your current phone, there are independent companies that will or will sell you a unlocked phone at competitive prices.

Evaluating your Options

If you are fortunate enough to have a tri-band or quad-band GSM cell phone and your carrier offers international plans, this will be one of the easiest solutions to use. Realize you may as much as $1.00 per minute PLUS a possible monthly service charge. If you only have a tri-band GSM Cell phone, be sure to confirm that the frequencies are correct for the countries you are visiting. If they aren't, it's usually possible to rent a quad-band phone from your carrier at an extra charge.

If available at your arriving airport, another easy option is to simply rent a cell phone for that county. In addition to cost (which will vary significantly by country), the downsides include the need for multiple rentals if you are traveling to more than one country, needing to carry your U.S. cell phone with you with its internal address book, and the risk that there simply won't be any phones available when you land.

The last option, while appearing to be slightly technically intimidating, is likely to give you the most flexibility and the cheapest rates. A Google search on the web shows multiple companies in Southern California where you can purchase pre-paid SIM cards. If you don't already have a compatible tri-band or quad-band GSM phone (like the BlackBerry 7100t), these same companies will sell (or rent) you the correct "unlocked" GSM cell phone and you can simply put your local SIM card into it when you return home. Unlike the other options, your outgoing call rates are just fractions of a dollar per minute even for international calls back to the U.S. Plus in nearly every country you get unlimited, FREE incoming calls, regardless of their origin.

With the improvements in technology and the need to be globally connected 24x7x365, options abound to provide a linkage back home. We have examined the various facets of using our familiar cell phones as that umbilical each with their advantages and disadvantages. For those of you who escape from the phone on your dive vacations, remember, you can always tell them that you were diving when they called.