Hello,

I am currently in St Petersburg. After this my itinerary takes me to Helsinki, then Tallinn, and then into the Ukraine for several weeks.

I have a prepaid MTS sim card that I picked up in Moscow that has been working great. My original plan was to stop using this card when I left russia, to skip a phone for helsinki and tallinn (or to pick up new sims there, if it seemed sufficiently convenient given my short stays in each), and to get a new one for the Ukraine.

I see online, however, that MTS also operates a Ukraine subsidiary, and that MTS ukraine specifically advertises what seem like pretty decent roaming rates for Russia. I was wondering: does anyone know if a similar provision exists for MTS russia subscribers traveling in the Ukraine, or will roaming be sufficiently prohibitive such that I should just pick up a new SIM? The MTS ukraine web site is very helpful in English but the MTS russia web site, well, isn't.

I'm also vaguely curious what the roaming arrangements are in Helsinki and Estonia but I suspect the arrangement with the Ukraine is more likely to be favorable than the other two.

This business of swapping SIM cards every time you enter a new country is a little bit of a hassle - I wonder how long before you start to see well priced cross-regional SIM cards...

--Matt