Mobile And Global

By Wilson Rothman

Traveling overseas might not be high on your list of things to do right now. But if you're willing to brave airline security and risk exposure to SARS, it's probably a good idea to take along a mobile phone that works. No ordinary phone will do, however. To stay connected overseas, you need what they call a world phone--a device that conforms to an international standard for worldwide reception. I recently tested two models on a trip to London and Barcelona and found them surprisingly reliable--but expensive to use.

Despite hemorrhaging in the travel industry and continued trouble in the telecom sector, many carriers have chosen this moment to introduce new international price plans and beef up their roaming options. The preferred tech standard for world phones is GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications), a protocol that once worked only in Europe but is rapidly being adopted around the globe. AT&T Wireless, Cingular and T-Mobile are the three major GSM carriers in the U.S.

For my journey, I took along a Samsung V205 ($350) from T-Mobile and a Sony Ericsson T68i ($50) from AT&T Wireless. Both devices let you check e-mail as well as take and send pictures. Both seemed, at first glance, relatively user-friendly, but when I landed at Heathrow neither worked properly. It was only after some concerted fiddling that I realized the value of a pretrip checklist.

For starters, make sure your phone is, in fact, a world phone. Don't trust your salesman; call customer service for the definitive answer. Also, make sure it has been activated for international roaming. While you're at it, ask about carriers. When you land in another country, your phone will probably offer a choice of service providers, not all of which allow you to send and receive data. Last, to save time, make sure you have all your international dialing codes before you head off to the airport.

The good news is that once I ironed out the kinks, the phones worked just about everywhere I went, from London's Trafalgar Square to a medieval fortress in Tortosa, Spain. But talk ain't cheap. T-Mobile's WorldClass roaming plan starts with a 99-c--a-minute plan that covers 26 European countries, but in other countries you may pay as much as $4.99 a minute. AT&T Wireless WorldConnect and Cingular have similar offerings but they start at $1.29 a minute.

Checking e-mail costs a few cents per kilobyte--but the kilobytes add up, especially when your In box is full of spam that weighs in at an average of 8K per message. Therein lies the trouble with e-mail. Most handsets require you to open each piece of mail that you want to delete. You can skip messages, but then you will have to download the subject lines again on your next visit. If you want to save some money, wait until you get home to clean out your In box.

For me, the cost of the phones was well worth the peace of mind I got in return. Just be sure to remind everyone back home what time zone you're in--or turn off your ringer before you go to sleep.

Questions? You can e-mail wilson_rothman@hotmail.com