Flipper:

For people who rarely travel, or make few calls, ATT and Verizon International cell phone rates are fine. For me, My Passport SIM from Ekit works well and it saves me lots of money. Check a few of ATT's cell phone rates and then compare them to most SIM cards.

I am going to Italy, Israel, Egypt, Greece and Turkey in September. My Ekit Passport Sim charges 49 cents a minute plus a 35 cent connection fee to call back to the U.S. from each of these countries. So if I make a 10 minute call back to the U.S from each place I visit, it will cost me a total of $26.25. Those same 10 minute calls using ATT from a cell phone will cost about $85.50.

Yes; definitely I wouldn't want to use AT&T's card for long trips...but the high outlay for some cards outweighs the savings if you are only making a couple, short calls. A collection of calls that total 25 minutes (at USD$2/min) through AT&T on my trip would still cost less than an eKit SIM itself. Global Roaming or MaxRoam seem to provide even lower costs to the destinations I goto such as the Americas, with little outlay in the beginning. Even buying a SIM in-country might require an outlay of USD$15 just to get the card, then you can realize some savings. Guess it just depends on where you are going, and if you plan to talk a lot. I'm looking for a SIM card that I can use to travel around the Americas, then toss it over to people in my family that travel to other areas of the world: a SIM card that has a balance of good rates world-wide.

Heck even Searoam is a no-brainer compared to AT&T, but definitely not as good as ekit, global roaming, or maxroam.

-There's no connect fee on incoming calls within zone 1.
-You don't have to use the +1 DID.
-The Passport SIM is available for $20+$3 shipping direct from EKit on ebay:
International World SIM card with free Incoming calls! - eBay (item 130287597538 end time Sep-11-09 03:24:46 PDT)

While not every card is the best for any specific situation, this card isn't bad "overall".

On the Passport SIM, Ekit has 67 countries with free incoming.
http://ekit.com/ekit/MobileInfo/Service/ekpassport_dual

Zone distribution
Country, number of countries
1a 67
1b 7
2 28
3 25
4 12
5 5

In what way might Global Roaming be more unstable than Maxroam, or Searoam not as good as either of them, when the underlying SIM card and other details are exactly the same?

If you want up to date and accurate information, you'd do well to quit sweeping and inaccurate generalisations, discounting other people's suggestions, and be more objective. And read a bit more of what is already here. At the moment it is a little difficult to understand whether you are more keen on asking other people or telling them.

A decision what card to use will depend on what calls are likely to be made and received, for instance whether these are mostly to and from the user's home country, within the visited country, or out to other countries. As an example, this summer I have been in countries where the incoming cost on either local or roaming SIM is free, and the per minute cost of calling home or within the country could be 9 to 13 eurocents on a local SIM, 7 to 20p with Vodafone UK, 25p with O2 UK, 30 to 50 cents with any European or roaming SIM, and 58 cents to over a euro with Maxroam, and add on that it is more expensive to call the Belgian Maxroam number. Oh, and I nearly forgot to mention the cost of using data, which was 6 and 10 euros per month compared to 1.25 to 3 pounds per megabyte or one card's nearly 2 euros per 100kB, which is almost 20 times markup on the EU mandated wholesale rate.

I'm not discounting anyone's suggestions. In fact, that's what several people here have done about what I've said or found. I feel the warmth and welcoming of this forum to be lacking.

On the contrary, I'm putting out what I've learned, and hopefully either people will learn from it or correct me so that we can put more updated info about the best cards on this site. It looks like we've identified three cards, and one voip service. Anyone have more information or other ways with the best combination of services? Or do we want to continue personalizing the whole thing?

I have to say I would agree. It would be nice to for instance make a wiki and put advice for various scenarios that come up, like places where people travel to, where they call/who calls them, etc. and then receive the best current advice based on information that we keep up to date. I personally am still wondering about a good method of receiving calls in Europe from people who are in the US. Ekit's rates sound nice but how much do callback services cost and how reliable are those? Basically, I want to forward calls from my standard US post-paid line to another US number which then forwards calls to whatever SIM I am using. The question is, assuming I already have the desired SIMs, how much do these forwarding services usually cost for someone in my situation? Also things like am I charged extra for unanswered calls, voicemail reception, etc.?

Have you looked at Telna Mobile? It gives you a US number and the rates are not too bad. I used it on a recent trip and was quite satisfied.

As for the 3rd party number that will forward to your international sim, the cost and reliability vary. You just have to look at their website and test them out. I have used voicestick and les.net in the past. And in both cases I have sometimes been charged for incomplete calls, etc.

lack of warmth?
 

<i>I feel the warmth and welcoming of this forum to be lacking.</i>

Yes I have found the same. It's just that some folks are more helpful than others I guess! On balance though it's worth running the course for the info that is shared.

my 2¢
 

I generally have found the opposite to be true. Proud to say - this is one of the FEW places that I visit on the Net that people are generally warm and willing to help. And I'm probably one of the biggest cry-babies around!

My thoughts on your OP - when you use subjective terms like "Appears to be" or "You run the risk of" or "Seems to be" or "seem to understand" you would probably garner some sort of ridicule or at the very least, skepticism. It's the nature of every subjective "list" ever created - people just don't agree.

Basically, I think you set yourself up for this type of response. Good luck with your compilation.

The only problem with Telna is the high annual fee if you don't travel often. This is on top of it not being pre-paid.