Ricky Martin’s Blog

As Many North American’s it can be hard to travel and not bring along your cell phone, or Mobile phone, regardless of what you call it most people have become attached to their cell phones and it is a center for all their communication needs.

And as a result if you bring it with you anywhere outside of your home country it may end of being very expensive to use it. We have all heard the stories of the poor tourist who brought along his/her phone only to find out when they got home they had a huge bill with roaming charges and long distance fees, that sometimes can easily get into the hundreds and/or thousands of  dollars if you are not careful.

• Now the first thing you need to do is get a GSM phone that has at least 3 bands but preferably 4 bands that would be labeled as a “world phone”, this is key as most of the rest of the world works with the GSM standard and only now is North America starting to move over more to it. In Canada GSM providers would be mainly Rogers, Fido, and Telus, Bell is starting to switch over and there are some other local carriers, and in the US it is mainly AT&T and T-Mobile that offer you GSM.
• The next thing is to get it unlocked, depending on your phone and carrier you can either do this for free or very cheap, but depending on the Brand and Model some can’t be unlocked. It also depends on what you will be doing with your phone, if your just making calls, you don’t need anything fancy, but if you are a die hard techie with a smart phone things can get more difficult. \
• Now This is the most important thing, unless you absolutely need a number active before you arrive in your destination, Buy your SIM Card when you get there, usually you can find a shop in the airport as soon as you walk out or they might even have a vending machine, if not most providers have shops in most towns and in Europe many of the grocery stores even have their own brand of pay as you go SIM cards. And Whatever you do don’t buy the one’s offered in the travel Magazines or on the plane’s duty free in flight catalog, usually they are overpriced and bad service quality.

From my experience usually you can get the SIM card for free when you purchase airtime at the same time from the provider in the country your visiting, otherwise you can get it very cheap. the alternative is you can usually find a package on e-bay where you can get a SIM card in advance sometimes with airtime but usually without, you still need to call to set up an account once you are in the destination country. So save yourself the time, money and hassle as if you buy it once you arrive you still have to provide some information but usually minimal and they usually charge you on e-bay for a card you could get for free.

I have done this myself in Italy, UK, as well as Canada and the USA, and works like a charm every time.

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