TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Re: Prepaid GSM With Roaming Allowed Available in the US?

Re: Prepaid GSM With Roaming Allowed Available in the US?

Joseph (JoeOfSeattle@yahoo.com)
Fri, 15 Jul 2005 19:12:35 -0700

On Fri, 15 Jul 2005 14:20:20 +0200, Marc Haber
<mh+usenetspam0339@zugschl.us> wrote:

> Hi,

> A friend of mine lives in the States, has two kids and bad credit
> records. She wants (alone) to come visit Europe this fall, and wants
> her kids to be able to call her in Europe by dialing a local US
> number.

She's got a problem. If she has bad US credit and she wants to be
able to be reached by dialing a local US number (assuming that it's a
US GSM carrier's number.) To be able to call a US number and be
reached in Europe requires international roaming. International
roaming in western Europe is 99=A2 per minute or more (depending on
whether a major operator such as T-Mobile or cingular is used.) The
carriers won't even allow you to have international roaming unless you
have really good credit since the ability is there to rack up really
big international roaming bills.

> If the issue were the other way round, I'd come to the States with a
> prepaid GSM SIM that has roaming enabled, and put that SIM into a
> borrowed GSM phone over there.

You'd still pay a huge amount of money with roaming rates as high if
not higher than the other way around.

> She now tells me that prepaid GSM is almost a non-market in the US,
> and that no prepaid GSM SIMs are available that allow international
> roaming.

International roaming does not exist on prepaid in the US. Even not
all prepaids in Europe offer international roaming and the ones that
do it's quite expensive.

> A GSM phone useable in the European GSM networks is available here, I
> have a spare Nokia 6310. The issue is the prepaid SIM that allows a
> phone located in Europe to be reachable with an American number.

It does not exist. Roaming in another country is expensive no matter
what you do.

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