World cell phone

In response to Lawrence Schonbrun’s “Person to Person” question (Nov. ’09, pg. 77), using a cell phone worldwide is easy. You need just two things: a “world phone” and service.

The “world phone” is any unlocked four-band or quad-band GSM phone. (“GSM” is an industry standard, and phones with it can be used in 212 countries and territories.) Many come from China and in much of the world are called “China phones”; I’ve seen some on eBay.com for $25-$50. (ITN found these listed on eBay for $80-$250.) If your current phone is a four-band phone, it can be unlocked and used. You can do it through your service provider for a fee.

I suggest you buy a dual SIM phone. That way, you’ll have your home phone and, when you travel, a local phone combined.

The SIM card in your US phone is “you” to the phone and has your “subscriber information” from your service provider as well as your address book information on it. When you put it in the second SIM slot on your new phone, it becomes “your” phone.

(Editor’s note: AT&T [formerly Cingular] and T-Mobile are the major GSM providers in the US. Verizon, Sprint, MetroPCS, Nextel and a handful of other carriers use an incompatible technology called CDMA [Nextel’s is called iDEN], which does not use SIM cards. With them, instead of a SIM, subscriber information is stored on a nonremovable chip in the phone. These phones do not work internationally because CDMA operates on different frequencies than GSM.)

Next you need local service where you will be traveling. In most countries you can easily buy prepaid SIM cards in small markets or at newsstands. I have also seen them for sale from tables on my way out of some airports. They are also sold on the Internet. A SIM card costs $5-$10 and gives you a local phone number as well as a good many minutes. I was in Australia in 2009 and my Virgin Mobile SIM card cost AUD5 (US$4.60).

The SIM card must be activated and the seller should include this in the price. The SIM card activation is done from a cell phone or a computer, depending on the country and carrier.

You can, in the same stores, buy prepaid long-distance service to call the US. These give very low-cost minutes back to the US. You use this prepaid card by dialing an access number on your cell phone and the US number you wish to call. This number can be easily programmed into your phone’s memory.

With your dual SIM phone, you now have your local phone and your US phone, both using their own number, in one phone in your pocket. It’s a great convenience. As you go from country to country, you just need to buy a new SIM locally. This is an equally great convenience at home if you have to have two cell phone numbers (i.e., a work phone and a personal phone).

ED GRAPER

Goleta, CA