International Cell Phones

Can I Use My Cell Phone Outside of the Country
Whenever you travel abroad one of the most important thing that need to be put on your things-to-bring list is your cell phone. It will be your means to communicate with your loved ones and family as well as your business colleagues back in your home country. Some may prefer to communicate using emails and video conferences as these mediums are quite cheaper than other ways. However, thanks to rapid technology advancements, you can now use your cell phone to communicate breezily anytime and anywhere around the world regardless of where you are or where the other person is located.

There is one problem though; can you go and travel outside of your home country and still use your own mobile phone to contact those at your home country? For the purpose of this discussion, say that you are traveling to any of Europe countries and you want to contact someone in United States with your cell phone which is provided by US cell phone provider. Can you still call them? If you can call them, how much will the calls cost you? Would it be significantly higher than normal call rate?

What I’m trying to discuss here has nothing to do with telling your cell phone provider to global-roaming your mobile phone. No, this is about using the same SIM card and only one SIM card. I’m talking about how you can save significantly a lot of money with using this method and the same time enjoy the benefits of using this facility hassle-free. We are going to take a look at how to use any prepaid SIM in any European country regardless of who provides your mobile phone service.

Before we go any further, I would like to remind you though that to make sure that you can utilize this facility, your cell phone has to be either a 900 MHz or 1800 MHz GSM band. If your mobile phone has both of them, then that would be an extra advantage for you since that would mean you have more choices.

What the heck is GSM?

GSM is an acronym for Global System for Mobile communications which is the most common standard for mobile phones anywhere in the world. GSM is actually a cellular network which is used by our mobile phones to connect to by searching for cells in the immediate vicinity. So as I mentioned earlier about 900 MHz and 1800 MHz, that figures are the frequency ranges or bands that are common to be operated among most GSM networks. There are other bands as well such as 850 MHz and 1900 MHz bands which are available at only certain countries like in the United States and Canada.

In other words, GSM is used to develop a common cellular phone system across various countries so you can use it anywhere around the world. All these networks behind the GSM system is too large and complicated to be understood by laymen people like you and me, but they are all there to provide all of the services that we enjoy today. One of the easiest function that is available due to this technology is when you dial 112 on your mobile phone that will automatically redirect the call to emergency lines at the respective country no matter where you bought the mobile phone. For example, if your mobile phone was purchased in the US, you will be redirected to Australian emergency line 000 if you happen to dial the 112 number whenever you are in Australia.

Back to our discussion, this technique allows you to use only one SIM card on your GSM cell phone to make outgoing calls and also receiving inbound calls regardless of where you are located or where your native SIM card country is. I think I can safely say that this facility is very useful for those who travel a lot especially among Europe countries. I should also point out to you that using this facility is somehow cheaper than activating your current mobile phone to roaming state.

Allow me to introduce you guys to one of the best international prepaid cards, United Mobile or fondly known as Riing. When you use this international SIM card, you will be using an international prefix +423. One of the biggest advantages of using this international prepaid card is you can get free incoming calls in eighty different countries worldwide. As far as I am concern, the service provided by this company is so far reliable since the company is considered as the oldest among all the other international prepaid GSM SIM cards.

Recently the company has collaborated with ICQ instant messenger to introduce a new international calling card which is called ICQsim which has the same +423 prefix number and the same rate as
Reference : http://www.howardforums.com/showthread.php?t=622551
http://www.prepaidgsm.net/en/international.html
http://www.united-mobile.com/