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Making Your Mobile Go Global
The Travel Technologist · August 30, 2001

It is without a doubt one of the most laughable but little-noticed ironies of the information age: our cellular phones don't like to travel.

Think about it. Those ultra-light wireless devices that are meant to be taken everywhere are practically useless outside of our own country. It's not that they aren't portable, per se, but that they're rarely compatible with another cellular network. You might as well leave the handsets at home.

"I hate mobile phones," complains Robert McAuley, who travels for a Cushing, Okla., technology company. He describes the network mismatches as a tiresome hassle, but he's especially angry at his dual-band phone, which charges him an international long-distance roaming fee to pick up messages while he's in Hong Kong (for some reason, his Asian cellular service doesn't include the territory). "It's nonsense," he says.

Quantifying the incompatibilities between cellular networks is difficult. The major research firms don't devote much time to the problem as far as I can tell, preferring to focus on future wireless fiascos, such as 3G, rather than opportunities to patch up the present ones. Finding succinct, credible information about how to deal with these handset headaches seems even more challenging. Commercial interests invariably taint information on the Web. Publishers always want to sell you a card or rent you a phone, so you're not sure if you can believe any of their advice.

Here are what I consider to be your best options when you travel overseas:

The satellite phone. My preferred solution to the patchwork of cellular networks is to bypass them entirely by buying a satellite phone. As the name implies, the phone connects to a network of satellites - no more trying to sort out TDMA from CDMA or GSM. You can use it virtually anywhere on the planet. However, a satellite phone is about 10 times as expensive as a conventional cellular phone, and that doesn't include connection rates of close to $2 a minute plus any long-distance charges.

"Right now, hand-held satellite phones have a real credibility problem and will be ultra niche markets probably dominated by wealthy techno-freaks or paramilitary organizations," observes reader Mark Evans, who reminded me, after a previous column on satellite phones, that most places I'd visit would have adequate cellular coverage anyway.

Good point.

Two phones. In an age where everything from batteries to employees are considered disposable, my second-favorite mobile phone option is to buy two phones. This is particularly useful for travelers who spend most of their time in two countries - say, traveling from an office in the United States to England every other week. Dollar for dollar and pound for pound, this is the most cost-effective solution, but it doesn't quite solve the problem. You're still juggling at least two voice-mail accounts.

James Lick, who spends most of his time in Taiwan but also lives in the United States, likes the two-phone method. "One is my US-based phone which works only in North America. The other is my Taiwan-based phone which works just about everywhere except North America," he says. "I've looked into the issues and decided that carrying two phones was probably the best choice."

Among his arguments for using two phones is that even if he used an American GSM phone, which would be compatible with a European or Asian network, he'd still get hit with what he calls "exorbitant international roaming rates."

Dual-band phones. If you're somewhere between the price point of two phones and the efficiency of a satellite phone, then you should consider a dual-band handset. Make sure that the phone comes with an interchangeable SIM-card. (A SIM is what's known as a Subscriber Identity Module, which controls authentication, ciphering and personalization preferences on GSM units.) This is the best way of getting connected when you're traveling to multiple countries on lengthier assignments. If you shop around, you can find a reasonably priced service for the country you're visiting.

"If I am traveling to the UK I order a SIM card ahead," says Reece Thomson, a Los Angeles-based traveler. "It arrives before I leave and I can input my UK numbers. I also have a SIM card for the Netherlands that only needs to be topped up once a year, and in Australia and New Zealand, I rent a SIM card."

Thomson says a clever technology user can find a way to get around the high calling fees. For example, he takes advantage of messaging services on his mobile phone and if he isn't near a landline, will offer a caller the local cellular phone number for the country he's in. "That way I incur no roaming or toll charges with my US-SIM card in the phone," he says.

These solutions may sound simple, but they aren't. For the experienced mobile phone user, they're probably simplistic. Why? If you are a real world traveler, you would agree that these three options are good starting points, and not definitive answers to your mobile phone dilemma. I routinely hear from wireless users who carry three or four handsets with them because of other cost and compatibility issues - factors that are beyond the scope of this column.

The best I can do is to point you in the right direction; the rest is up to you. As a technology columnist, I find it incredibly frustrating that I have to oversimplify an issue like this in order to cover it in the space that's available to me. Make that double for having to leave you with little more than vague advice about how to travel with a mobile phone.

But don't blame me for this mess. Instead, fault the cellular carriers who are exploiting the network incompatibilities instead of trying to bridge them.

Christopher Elliott is a travel commentator based in Key Largo, Fla. All e-mailed questions may be edited, condensed or republished at the site's discretion. The Travel Technologist appears weekly on this site.