Details, the phone

The phone came yesterday. It's a GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) phone and according to one source "is the world's leading cell phone standard, which was first adopted in Europe and then spread throughout Asia, Africa and the Pacific Rim (Australia, N. Zealand, etc.). This explains why the same cell phone that works in London also works in Johannesburg, Beijing and Sydney. The United States however did not standardize and it was left to the competing wire carriers to create whatever standard they wished." Unlike in the US which requires service contracts phones in Italy are essentially "pay-as-you-go", using SIM cards.

And what, pray tell, is a SIM card? It is a "Subscriber Identity Module card - a small printed circuit board that must be inserted in any GSM-based mobile phone when signing on as a subscriber. It contains subscriber details, security information and memory for a personal directory of numbers. The card can be a small plug-in type or sized as a credit-card but has the same functionality. The SIM card also stores data that identifies the caller to the network service provider."

I have come across at least two companies that can provide you with both an unlocked GSM phone and a SIM card tailored to fit, as well as additional overseas phone service. There is Cellularabroad.com and Telestial.com and both appeared to have good reputations. (I came across their names at Slowtrav.com and in the magazine Transitions Abroad.) We used Telestial to acquire not only the phone but the SIM card as well. After spending some time online researching this whole thing we settled on Telestial since they seemed to have the slightly less expensive program and a better selection of phones. My main concern was to find a phone that had an integrated camera (don't ask me why) and especially Bluetooth wireless technology to help expedite moving my addresses from my computer to my phone. We settled on the Sony Ericsson z600 phone. The Bluetooth worked like a charm and allowed me to easily move any of my addresses from my Apple laptop to my new phone.

You could buy an unlocked GSM phone from any number of other vendors online (unlocked simply means it can be used with a SIM card anywhere in the world without any special modifications to the phone's software) but be careful. You might save a bit of money but, as in most other things, particularly when you're traveling, the key issue is customer service as well as phone availability, so don't be swayed by price. Go with a tested and reputable vendor.

So there you have it.