International Cell Phone for Multiple Countries

If you're traveling to multiple countries, you need a phone that always "acts" the same to you and to all the people who call you:

Ideally this means finding a service (like this one) that lets you keep the same number wherever you go and lets you dial the same way wherever you go.

The Problem with the alternatives:

As you go from country to country, you really don't want to fiddle around with your phone settings or keep buying different SIM cards for each country. While some people may think buying local SIM cards/cell phones is ideal, you will find that every time you change your SIM card, your phone number will change too. At that point, you'll have to communicate your new number back to everyone who has your old number.

Also, you lose whatever money you had on your old SIM card since you can't use those minutes on a card from a different company. Third, due to new anti-terrorism rules, you have to fill out a lot of paperwork (including copies of your passport) in many foreign countries just to buy a SIM card. So, do you really want to go through all that hassle when it might not save you much money anyway?

The Solution:

Buying an international SIM card (such as those that ship with all RangeRoamer packages and rentals) lets you roam on a very large variety of networks all over the world without having to do anything special. Your phone acts the same everywhere - your way of calling and being called remains the same too. We do admit that if you are going to stay in just one country for a long time (say more than a few months) it will make more financial sense to get a local phone in the long-term, but the whole point is that RangeRoamer is a good solution for multi-country travel without having to worry about the details. Even if you do settle down in one country, you will surely find yourself traveling internationally every now and then, and that old RangeRoamer SIM card might come in handy there too.

Why you don't want to just "pick up a phone when I land in Europe."

Yes, in concept this sounds like a pretty good idea. After all, it is quite likely that picking up a Europe cell phone locally over there will cost less than buying one in the States.

There are a few holes in this line of thinking though:

  1. You won't know your phone number until after you get there.
  2. You'll get good local rates but expensive international rates (back to the US) and if you leave the country in which you bought that SIM card, you will find yourself paying very hefty roaming fees if it works at all. This is because prepaid local country SIM cards aren't designed with international roaming in mind. They want you to buy a local SIM and then throw it away when you leave that country (along with all that leftover airtime too!)
  3. You are going to have to spend time at a cell phone store filling out anti-terrorism laws paperwork (possibly in another language) and photocopying your passport because new legislation bars the anonymous sales of SIM cards across most of the European Union.
  4. You'd have to buy airtime vouchers repeatedly from stores in that country whenever you run out of minutes.

The Solution:

Convenience is worth a price. Avoid the foreign cell phone shop - get it done online, easily and quickly. Enjoy North American customer care and "way of doing business," including paying in US dollars and having a 30-day money back gaurantee and 1 year US warranty. And, Fedex will just drop off the package at your door; a few minutes will let you knock this item off your to-do list definitively and without worrying about "what-ifs." And really, if you add up the cost of the local SIMs, the unused minutes in each country, the international call costs, and the value of your time, is it really worth the hassle?