<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by cordelli:
There is another option, it's what I do. I have a dual non GSM AT&T telephone for within the United States. When I travel I have a triband GSM with an AT&T sim in it for use out of the country. Same number, etc. Yes there is a monthly fee ($8 or so) and yess the per call charges are up there (though not sky high), but having one number here and over there, as well as still having a telephone that can go analog over here when I am out of reach of a digital tower) makes it worth it to me.</font>
Let me offer another opinion. Speaking to the non-GSM AT&T option described above, it's true that you have analog fallback capability domestically. But, the international roaming is somewhat of a bailing wire approach. For the $8 a month fee (which is of course $96/year), what they're really doing is giving you a UK Vodafone SIM. That is, you have a dedicated mobile number in the UK. Since they have some level of integration, you don't really need to know or care what this number is. When the international SIM is powered up in a GSM phone and registered anywhere in the world that offers GSM service, Vodafone's UK switch is notified, and it ties in to your home AT&T switch, causing inbound calls to forward to your int'l phone.
cordelli has already covered the advantages. Let me cover the disadvantages:
- Inbound calls to your GSM phone go from your home switch first to the UK and then to whereever your mobile is. So, if you're in Singapore and receive a call from your US number, your account will be charged a call forwarding call (including int'l long distance) from the US to the UK, plus an international roaming call which has to include not only the roaming payment to the Singapore GSM system, but the long distance charge to get the call from the UK to Singapore. This is one reason it costs more per minute as well as per month.
- Since the roaming service is a completely separate but connected service, lots of features don't work the same as they do at home. For example, voice mail takes 20 minutes or so to kick in after you turn off the phone. Also, things like call forwarding and especially SMS (text messaging) don't work, unless they've changed things recently.
I have both the above setup and the T-Mobile solution. With T-Mobile, not only are you using the same handset (if you want to), but it's roughly the same service worldwide, since the PCS 1900 standard that is used in North America is a variant of GSM. In my experience, all of the features work seamlessly, including voice mail, call forwarding, and text messaging. The big drawback is that the coverage within the US is less, especially since there's no analog roaming fallback. But, these days, unless you're in or travel to rural areas a lot, this may not be much an issue.