Circle Asia Trip - one solution?
 

I will be traveling to 5 countries over a month and need some help pulling all the forum information together. I will be receiving inbound calls from the US as well as the local countries. I will be placing outbound calls to the US and some local calls. Data access would be nice, mostly to check email - but not a requirement. My goal is low cost inbound and outbound and reliability. I don't need the absolute lowest cost.

I own an unlocked Nokia 6620 and a Sprint PPC-6700. I also have an old Riing card that probably can be reactivated (I have two and one has never been used). I have accounts at Callback World and Enlinea. Finally, I have a VoiceStick account.

I will be travelling to Tokyo, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore and Sydney.

Can anyone help me formulate a plan for this trip?

The first point I can make is that Tokyo is the ringer in the list. There is no GSM in Japan. To roam in Japan you will need to buy or rent a UMTS handset. If you only plan to be there for a short time you can rent a UMTS handset at the airport for about US$9/day. From the Nokia website I learned that the 6620 is a US-oriented GSM 850/1800/1900 tri-band phone. While this phone may work every place you mention, except Tokyo, it will limit you to service only on the 1800 MHz band. I know nothing about the Sprint phone but assume it's a CDMA phone. I think you should buy a new unlocked GSM phone with both 900 & 1800 MHz. Since you need to buy a new phone, you might as well look at one with UMTS (WCDMA-2100) as well.