And if you have a WiFi phone you should be able to send FishText, smsBug or similar system at any hotspot you can access.

For 3 UK prepaid, it's £3 in the EU, but not all of Europe. They have no roaming in Norway, for instance. Japan is not covered (maybe you were looking at the post-paid, Andy?) and neither are quite a few major spots: Mexico, Canada, New Zealand, and it looks like they're missing all of South America and a lot of Asia. Some places where they do have coverage don't have data access (i.e. India).

It is a good deal for data roaming in the US, which is a worthy point since getting a prepaid SIM in the US isn't as easy as it is elsewhere in the world, and the only ones that do data are AT&T ($ 0.01/KB) or T-Mobile (with a $1/day Sidekick package).

As for T-Mobile UK, £1.50/MB is a great deal for roaming the EU (again, not including Norway) but everywhere outside the EU is £7.50/MB. I suppose that's only slightly worse than £6/MB when you're talking about using only a few KB of data. Their coverage list is pretty extensive, with multiple partners in a lot of countries. No coverage in Nepal. No GPRS in Bolivia. (Random checks, those two.)

Excellent point. This is handy in Europe and the US where you can often find WiFi access. From my experience in less-developed countries though, finding open WiFi networks is not very common.

If you'll have consistent internet access by computer, one advantage of using one of the Betamax services is that you can send SMS from their client or through their website and you can set it to appear as coming from your phone number. I use this feature a lot even at home, as I can type a message a lot faster on a keyboard and it's often cheaper than the home country SMS rates.

One more point for T-Mobile and roaming in Europe: they offer a Euro Travel Booster where you get £7.50 credit for £5, valid for 20 days.

"Charge: £5. Allowance: £7.50 (up to 19 minutes of calls, receive up to 39 minutes of calls or send up to 30 texts)"

This might be handy since sometimes you may actually need to make or receive a call. I've contacted them asking whether this credit applies to GPRS as well. That would make their £1.50/MB for Europe even lower.

Follow up on T-Mobile's Euro Travel Booster: the credit will be applied only to calls and text messages.

www.goglobalsim.com 20p worldwide....

The GoGlobal SIM card rates and tariffs assume fair usage of the Services by the customer. This includes, but is not limited to maintaining a ratio of outbound tariff enabled calls to inbound calls of more than 30% on the customers account. There is also a call to SMS policy, i.e. if it is deemed that a customer has bought the GoGlobal Sim for the use of SMS only, GoGlobal reserves the right to suspend service forthwith. In the event of fair usage not being sustained, GoGlobal reserves the right to review the rates and tariffs applied to the customer account or to terminate the Services and in this event, such termination shall be deemed to have been made by the customer. GoGlobal reserves the right to terminate without prior notice for any misuse of the product.

1. This service is for the benefit of all customers and will not be permitted to be abused (see clause 8.4). Therefore GoGlobal reserves the right to disconnect this service at any time, failure to make any outbound calls after receiving 50 inbound will result in the inbound calls being blocked, and a £3.00 fee charged for reconnection. Failure to comply can result in this service being withdrawn and the customer’s contract being terminated forthwith.

2. The service will be run 24 hrs 7 days a week to the destinations posted, some destinations will run 24 hrs 5 days a week Monday through Friday (please see main web site free roaming for details).There will be a 10p incoming call tariff set for countries that only run free roaming Monday through Friday. This charge will only apply Saturday/Sunday .

Cheap ?

Read the small print and you will find above rules.

The monday to friday part is really a big laugh.

o2 ireland gives 250 free sms/month to all numbers