One of the deep questions I have about life is - how rich do you have to be before you drink something from the hotel mini bar without resenting the price they charge you?
Or maybe I’m just naturally mean, which is why I carry two mobiles these days, as I hate being ripped off for roaming charges. I carry a German mobile and a spare one I use for outbound calls, primarily when I’m in the UK, as I’m flitting back and forth between the two countries pretty regularly. The spare one is not a number I normally give out. Incoming calls are therefore taken on my German mobile.
Of course, it still hurts when someone phones you on the German phone when you’re out and about - for instance, someone in England calls your German mobile when you’re in England (or anywhere else outside Germany for that matter).
Last night, I arrived in Palo Alto (where AdMob is based) and put my German cash card into an ATM and happily got some cash. I switched on my laptop and easily connected to a wireless network. I turned on my German mobile and ….nothing. It just doesn’t work here. Then, I put a newly purchased US Sim card into my spare phone, only to remember I hadn’t got it unlocked. Damn.
So, I now have a situation where I can’t take calls on my German phone all week, as I had to put the Sim card into the German phone. And even if I could, I’d have to keep swapping Sim cards to make calls and then to check if I’d received any. Not exactly a one-world approach.
Incidentally, if anyone can recommend a better way than carrying 3 phones with me - which is what I might have to resort to now - I’d love to hear from you.
Now I need to wrestle with another paradox - shall I have that gin and tonic from the mini bar or not?
What kind of handset is your spare phone? You might be able to get it unlocked by finding the code online or paying someone to do it for you? Might be worth the price…
John - yeah, I probably could easily enough, but it doesn’t really solve the problem ie that the German one doesn’t work anyway.
Russell
You might considder getting a WiFi-enabled phone, and then setting up a VoIP solution? Don’t know how much you hang around hotspots / find yourself in the vicinity of WLANs, but for me, going abroad, I switch off the GSM antenna and leave the WiFi antenna on, and forward my cellphone to my SkypeIn number? Even though most people know just to Skype me by now…
Definitely have the G&T Russell. It’s a business expense.
Have you taken a look at the Vodafone Passport offer? I like the concept of paying 75p per call and then using my existing price plan minutes. (I like it more than paying £2 a minute anyway.)
It’s a hack but just forward the german number to a local SkypeIn num and use Skype VM while you are travelling. It works better than sim swapping at least.
officialy it’s not allowed…but you can copy the data/content of your providers simcard (no it’s never really yours) to a multi-simcard which manages the copies you made. There are several solutions/products available.
e.g. http://www.vavolo.com/productdetails.asp,ProductID,2687,,.htm
It doesn’t work with the newest sim-cards, because of an other protection alogorithm. But if it works you don’t have to physically switch the simcards in your phone and through callforwarding you can always be reached.
If you don’t have the patience for Skype call setup handshaking, just forward your home sim to your roaming sim and run your roaming sim in your (unlocked) phone. It’s still much cheaper than incoming roaming calls. Or look for these upcoming global mvno’s with multiple country coverage, pools of phone numbers in each one, and one sim card for it all.