The roaming specialists here at Global Cellular Rental have the ability to provide you with a local area code that your friends and family are more familiar with. So, if you are traveling through out the globe and want a local phone number in Tennessee, New York, Nevada, Florida, Texas, Massachusetts or just about any other state or any other country in the world, we can do it. This feature spares the dialer who is not familiar with how to dial internationally a real headache.

Safe Travels,

Lauren

We have established some new reciprocal roaming agreements, with better rates, for our clients looking to rent a cell phone in China or India. Check out our new rates, they just cannot be beat!

Safe Travels,

Cheryl

If your traveling abroad and your current wireless phone will not work, you’re not alone. A hefty 50% of USA cellular telephones will not work overseas due to varying wireless standards used here in the USA. Many phones here in the USA, working with carriers such as Verizon, Sprint/Nextel and a few others have adopted wireless technologies such as TDMA (Time Division Multiple Access) that are unique to this country and do not have the required technology or necessary frequency to be used with overseas wireless operators. Now, if your US wireless carrier is T-Mobile or Cingular which works on the G.S.M. (Global Standard for Mobiles) technology and you have a tri-band or quad-band phone then it should work in many overseas locations. Usually, you must be a customer for more than 6 months and have an additional credit check done before the international roaming provision can be activated on your account. The reason for this policy is that call costs while overseas usually range between $1.29-$4.99/minute and most cellular customers talk 30% more while traveling on business. Also, with a GSM Blackberry or another handheld data unit you can surf the web and send and receive emails for between $20.00-$30.00 per megabyte. Do the math, these carriers can get stung for thousands if the average person chats and surfs away as if they were burning from their pool of minutes or unlimited domestic data plans which is why personal credit becomes more important to your carrier.

There are several other cost effective ways for keeping in touch while traveling the globe. The simplest and most cost effective way to roam across the globe is by renting an international cellular telephone or Blackberry from providers who specialize in temporary international phone service. International phones usually rent from $25.00-$50.00 per week and commonly have rates lower than even the USA GSM carriers roaming rates including free incoming calls in many countries. Also, you can buy a world phone for between $60.00-$300.00 that can accept a prepaid international S. I. M. (Subscriber Identity Module) card that can be used in single country destination only. These prepaid SIM cards work well if you are traveling to a country where English is the primary language, otherwise all of your voicemail and other prompts to recharge the SIM with your credit card will be in the destination countries language and it is more than a little overwhelming. There are also more and more WVOIP (Wireless Voice Over IP) offerings for the person travelling with a laptop or Symbian phone that has a Skype or similiar account. WVOIP is in it’s developmental infancy so although you can make and receive calls for pennies from major world cities the service quality and coverage will be poor at best. Whatever option you choose it is always prudent to read the fine print for taxes, activation fees, network access fees, set up fees, etc… A shrewd traveler should be able to save big and have great coverage with a little research and web shopping prior to their departure date.

Happy travels.