Even as the world shrinks and we travel more and more freely, the irony is we avoid using our phones overseas. Our carriers think our travel entitles them to bill us $ 2 ,3, 5 a minute and $ 40 to download a 3 minute video on a roaming data charge. A study last year said international roaming fees can cost U.S. businesses $693.50 per trip for every global traveler.
As a result, many of us get local phones or SIM cards of the country we are visiting to lower the cost, but then have to tell everyone the temporary new number.
Solutions are emerging to allow you to at least keep using your usual mobile number, and may be even your regular mobile phone or PDA
The New York Times has a Skype based solution. Get a local SIM card for the country you are in (sorry, iPhone users your SIM is locked so as the reporter does, he gets a local Italian phone in addition). Forward your US mobile number to SkypeIn, and forward that to via SkypeOut to the number for the local SIM card. For calls back to US, he suggests getting on Wi-Fi and using Fring or Skype to dial out (again, no Skype for iPhone yet but available for many other PDAs)
Google Voice may make that much simpler. It allows you to forward calls from your Google voice number to a temporary number. Still in early release (only prior Grand Central numbers have access to to it today), you cannot forward to an international number today, but I am hoping they turn it on soon (readers, please go to this web page and click “Suggest It” next to the feature Forward calls to international phone number. The more of us suggest it, the sooner I hope Google turns the feature on)
So in that case I would forward calls from my US mobile to my Google Voice Number and set that to ring at the temporary local number in the country I am in. If that SIM has a reasonable call rate back to the US, I would use it directly to call back. Or using Wi-Fi as above I would get to Google Voice site on the web, type in the number I want to dial and it would call that number and connect to the temporary local number I am using.
Google Voice rates are generally less than 10c a minute around much of the world, with the highest being to some of the more remote islands – Falklands at 60c, Cook Islands at 87c and Nauru at 99c a minute.
Going forward, I also expect to see more of the Voxbone like global “883” country code numbers.
All this forwarding and routing and mucking around, because telcos around the world refuse to issue “visas” to your phone unless you are willing to pay $ 693.50 a trip.
