Need Some Help — International Prepaid Experiences?

Here’s the deal. I’m so over T-Mobile. Done.

I also don’t believe that Ver­i­zon will get an iPhone this year. Wish­ful think­ing, sure. But, tech­ni­cally, I’m not sure I believe Apple will make a CDMA phone, when they can milk AT&T for a lit­tle while longer, and be in a bet­ter posi­tion with Ver­i­zon (4G) next year.

Any­ways, I also don’t like my RIM browser. It’s crap. And, while the Storm 2 would be some­thing I could live with… I’d pre­fer a dif­fer­ent phone (right now think­ing Palm Pre, but lean­ing more towards Droid). And, here’s the catch.

I’m a glo­be­trot­ter. Verizon’s inter­na­tional story is one that con­tin­ues to baf­fle me. Their “world phones” suck. Well, except the Storm 2. And, prob­a­bly the other RIM phones they have depend­ing on your per­sonal pref­er­ence. Except the RIM browsers stink in com­par­i­son (and I want them to pay for that over­sight… bastards).

Seri­ously. Put the Storm 2 next to the Droid, and you’ll for­get how bad Motorola sucks pretty quickly.

[Total side­bar… remem­ber AT&T’s ads “fewest dropped calls”? I always thought their mar­ket­ing mes­sage on that ad was “we suck least” until some­one pointed out that they prob­a­bly just “have the fewest cus­tomers” for whom to drop calls.]

So, if I go to Ver­i­zon and pick a cool CDMA phone (with inno­v­a­tive fea­tures like “no call drop­ping”), I’m left with­out an inter­na­tional solu­tion. And, that’s just not possible.

I went to a Ver­i­zon store today and went all log­i­cal on the guy, see­ing if I could get a Ver­i­zon SIM for an unlocked GSM phone, pre­tend it was in a Ver­i­zon global phone, and then let me use a non global phone with the same para­me­ters as a global phone on my account (so I don’t have to pay for a sec­ond line, etc.). Prob­lem is, no way to get a Ver­i­zon SIM with­out hav­ing an active Ver­i­zon Global Phone on the account.

Long and short of it is, we came up with a solu­tion of using another vendor’s pre-paid wire­less GSM phone, and for­ward­ing my num­ber to that when I travel. This way, I pay as I go (which I essen­tially have to when trav­el­ing any­ways), I still have my num­ber, and so on. It’s only voice when I travel, but I’m OK with that, as except on T-Mobile, inter­na­tional data is quite expen­sive any­ways so I hes­i­tate to use it.

After doing some quick research, I found out that the US GSM car­ri­ers don’t pro­vide pre-paid ser­vices that roam inter­na­tion­ally (unless you count Mex­ico and Canada as inter­na­tional). A lit­tle more research found a pos­si­ble solu­tion, and here’s where I need help.

There are a few com­pa­nies who pro­vide SIMs for use in unlocked GSM phones specif­i­cally for US trav­el­ers abroad. The gen­eral rule is… buy a local pre-paid SIM if you’re going to be in a spe­cific coun­try, buy one where you can roam around oth­er­wise. You’ll pay more for the lat­ter, but it’s more con­ve­nient. There are 3 com­pa­nies that give me a com­fort­ing feel online… Sim­Card Global which gives you both US and UK local num­bers, Call In Europe — a French oper­a­tor, and National Geo­graphic Cel­lu­larAbroad (OK, National Geo­graphic gives you UK and US num­bers too). There’s some other advice worth read­ing (more here too) that’s helped me under­stand these options as well.

1. Any­one have any expe­ri­ence with any of these com­pa­nies that they can share? Keep it con­struc­tive but pos­i­tive or neg­a­tive is equally welcome.
2. Any­one have any expe­ri­ence using Ver­i­zon and for­ward­ing their num­ber else­where? If I have unlim­ited min­utes, I should be able to for­ward my phone to another NY # with­out any charges (except per­haps a monthly charge to turn on the abil­ity to for­ward)… but I want to make sure there won’t be any per-minute charges. Their web site and the sales guy I spoke to both said there wouldn’t be any addi­tional charges, but…
3. Any­one have another solu­tion they’ve come up with (work­ing on Ver­i­zon but need­ing a con­ve­nient inter­na­tional mobile phone solu­tion) that they care to share?

Please use the com­ments below for con­ver­sa­tion, or link to your blog with a response.

Thanks in advance.