TAKE TWO! ONE WILL BE BETTER. Advice especially for newbies.
 

TAKE TWO! ONE WILL BE BETTER. Advice especially for newbies.
A bit of advice especially for newbies.


If you are a newbie and you have not bought an international SIM card yet, you are in luck because the people here are pretty knowledgeable and willing to share. Most new people here will probably have one International SIM card. And have come here because when they tried to use it, the experience was less than optimal.

Here is my one bit of advice. I first used this expression with regards to taking digital photos. TAKE TWO! ONE WILL BE BETTER. At a certain level this is trite. One could take two rotten photos and one of them would be better. So be it.

Here is a list of some reasons why having two international SIMs along on trips is better than having one.

1. One SIM just might not work. Country issues. Company issues [goes out of business--it happens a lot in this industry]. Network issues. Whatever. There is a chance that the other card will work. You need to make sure you get different SIM cards for this to work, though.

2. Rates. One SIM might have better rates than the other.
Or one might have better data rates than the other. Sometimes half as much or more.

3. You lose one. It would help in this case to have two phones.

I think many of the people here take two or more SIMs with them.
But in a sense they are hobbyists and playing with the SIMs, errr, testing them is part of the experience.

I suspect others will be able to mention some other reasons having more than one SIM with you can be a good idea.

I followed this advice whenever possible. At one time I had two Nokia 21XX phones, one 1900 MHz for the US and one 900 MHz for everywhere else. They were too big to carry more than one. After phones got smaller and even multi-band (what an amazing advance that was) I'd carry two active phones. One with a local prepaid SIM and the other with my T-Mobile (US) SIM. Most places it was cheap enough to receive occasional calls on my roaming SIM. I always also carried my Mobal 02 SIM, even though I only ever sent or received and occasional SMS to be sure it was still alive. It was always my last-ditch backup. I need to find that SIM and see if it still works.

I gave my sister a Pirahna SIM. She has a corporate iPhone with an ATT SIM with international roaming active and she has been abroad within the last 60 days. Her most recent trip, her iPhone wouldn't log onto any tower in Russia and she used to Piranha. Somebody at ATT or her F500 IT department changed a setting an accidentally turned her international roaming off. Having a spare saved her bacon.

Thanks for the replies
 

Thanks for the replies. I thought we would get more than two, though.

I'll add, belatedly, a reason for 2 SIMS as well as 2 phones.

Was in Vietnam a year ago and my T-Mobile (U.S.) Blackberry stopped working. Called CS and they said my SIM is dead because there was a limit of 100,000 "logins" to the system. I assume every time you disconnect and reconnect via going thru a tnnel or in a garage counted. Also counted jumping from GPRS, to EDGE, to 3G. I was told there was nothing they could do to reactivate my SIM. She said new SIMS don't have that limit. I was stuck using my wife's new Android - which also had T-Mobiles WiFi calling ability.
I now have a new SIM and got an extra virgin SIM (never activated). I also have at least 2 small unlocked dumb phones that I can put a card into. One of them has a Truphone SIM that I haven't used in a while, but still works.
Our next trip will be to China in April. I will get a Piranha SIM since they seem to have not only, by far the best voice rates, but good data rates as well.

Bottom line: 2 SIMS for my Blackberry. 2 dumbphones (Trufone, Piranha) Wife: An HTC Smartfone (Android).

Let me say this. The use of international sims is of good use to some people. I have used the two international card system, and both cards I chose at the time were bad choices. One went out of business, and the other did not work as promised. So I went to local sim cards. I have a toll free number that is on my business card that clients can reach me anywhere in the world that I happen to be in. Since I am always there on business never pleasure the locals can call me without the cost of an international call for them. Since I travel to certain countries most of the time I just do a top up before I leave, and it is ready the next time I come to the country. For calls home there is Skype which I use every day. I am not saying that international sim cards are bad, but they are not for everyone. YMMV.

Long ago I read somewhere that a SIM had a limit on the number of power cycles due to some internal counter. It seemed like such a very large number that you could turn the phone off and on every day for your entire life before you reached the limit. I searched for this information recently but couldn't find anything.

all electronic devices with a flash memory have a limited lifetime. However to reach that on a GSM SIM card is nearly impossible. We have 10 year + SIM here at work which are used for device end-test (so they are switched on and off many times per day) and all are still working - despite the plastic is wearing out of course...

That's what T-Mobile told me. I had the impression it was just not turning the phone on and off - but the number of connections to the system. I had the impression that jumping from 2G to 3G and back counted. This seems to happen multiple times a day. Otherwise - couldn't they have simply said your SIM has obviously died and you need a new one. There was no reason for them to make up such a story.
mike

I concur - I carry at least 2 international sims as well. One too many times, I have got to my destination country (especially the Caribbean) an some of these international sims just will NOT work, period! On the times that they do, the rate one is charged is usually different than the advertised rate. Last April in Montegao Bay, Jamaica, my tmobile prepaid sim saved me. With Truphone and Telna, even though registered on the local networks, Non of the calls reached me. I was charged 1 min for every call of course. I ditched them quickly! For now, it's Ekit and piranha. I'll get a chance to test out Piranha in Nigeria next week. Where I will be for 10 days. Will be used only for incoming US calls. I have a couple of local Nigerian sims. One is strictly for data.