Phone Home(work)

I'm done ranting about the iPhone, but if it's not the right phone for the world traveler, what is? It turns out that this question has a surprisingly complicated answer.

Rather than do my own homework, I decided to crib from someone else's. My friend BT is a tech fetishist. When Matrix-style neural jacks are commercially available, I'm pretty sure BT will be the first in line. I explained my requirements to him. My fantasy phone would ...

• Be able to make and receive calls all over the world;
  
• Provide access to my email, text messaging and the web wirelessly, anywhere;
• Not cost an arm and a leg for roaming/international voice/data/text messaging;
  
• Connect to Wi-Fi networks when they're available

... to which BT snarked, "You're looking for a phone that does everything everywhere. Stop looking; it doesn't exist."

BT agrees that the iPhone is not a good solution for world travelers. He suggested I get a BlackBerry, preferrably the Bold. Sign up for the AT&T World Traveler plan. Also, ask for Blackberry's special world-wide unlimitted international email thingie, which (unlike a general international data plan) doesn't charge you per kilobyte. You could get your email in Antartica if you wanted to (and BT has).

Also, he suggested I buy a cheap unlocked quad-band GSM handset on eBay and buy local SIM cards wherever I am. When these words came out of BT's mouth, I stared blankly. "You know this stuff, right?", BT asked in disbelief. I didn't. In short, it means to buy a second phone that isn't tied into any particular netword (AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, etc.). The SIM card is the magic piece that gets you on a network. With a local SIM card, you can get on a local network and make calls more cheaply.

"Quad-band" means it'll work on whatever frequency band happens to be used by the local network. "GSM" is the name of the network protocol these phone use. In North America, the dominant protocol, CDMA, is different from that used by than the rest of the world (except Japan, which might as well be Mars for the bizarro cellular technology they use there). If you get a quad-band GSM phone, you should be able to connect to most cell networks anywhere with the right SIM chip. A search on eBay turns up many such handsets for sale for around $50. Not bad.

I'm told that buying SIM chips abroad is a breeze. Many come with a prepaid number of minues. When they run out, you can hand the chip over to a vendor and ask for, say, 10 euros of extra minues. They'll give you back the chip and some magic number to dial, and then Presto! you have more minutes. Shazaam.

I'm now the proud owner of a Blackberry Bold. We're still getting acquainted. I have yet to pick up el cheapo unlocked handset, but there's no rush.

Since this conversation, BT tipped me off to Google Voice, a voice mail/call forwarding solution that's coming soon from the Goog that should make all this stuff even easier and cheaper. Or so BT says. I'll take his word for it.