I was wondering which international sim has the best functioning sms to us network such as Cingular and t-mobile. and the best price and if possible free incoming the sim card will most likely be used in africa or maybe the middle east. any suggestions would be appreciated

As to sms international interchange, there's usually a simple relationship: if there's a roaming agreement between two networks, SMSes go both way. No agreement only voice calls are possible.

For your destinations theoretically Hop might be OK but nobody has made it yet to send and receive SMS... :P

MOST of the European carriers have FREE INBOUND SMS world-wide, even on the prepaid side. Not true for T-MO unless you have an SMS plan and then it will use your free messages for INBOUND.

My brother-in-law, a German who lives in Australia and who travels quite a bit between AU and Europe and places in-between, claims his German D1 card via SMS is his "roaming" phone. He did travel to Egypt, but we did not SMS him there. NOW SENDING SMS from the foreign country is another matter.

That is the extent of my knowledge.

Stan

i know with t-mobile its 15 cents for international sms and with cingular 20 cents

It's not a SIM but I'm a big fan of smsBug. Most European SIMs have free incoming SMS, so combine smsBug with a card that has GRPS (e.g. Wind) and you can do quite well.

well my brother would most likely be using it in diffrent places in africa he might be using it in diffrent places in africa most likely kenya, nigeria or somewhere in asia

Yeah. I'm not sure I'd trust the required GPRS roaming throughout Africa and Asia.

I see you mentioned Nigeria. Well on a visit to Nigeria last year. I used MTN Nigeria. SMS worked flawlessly! Incoming calls and SMS were free of course. I SMS'ed mostly to Tmobile (USA) and did not have any problems. Cost was approximately 10 cents per SMS. GPRS was not available then, but it is now. Actually all the four carriers there now have GPRS (some are offering it free), and they all have roaming too. So, he can just buy a sim in Nigeria and just roam with it if it's mostly for SMS. Pretty much all providers (don't know about the USA carriers though) offer free incoming SMS when roaming.

yea my mom would want the number before hand so id have to order it online i also noticed hop requires a phone that supports soft-sim

I carry a Blackberry on Cingular's global roaming plan so I don't worry about SMSs. I just send e-mails to the phones since the one thing US mobiles do right is provide you with an e-mail address.

In the Middle East and AFrica, 09 is the best. It has the longest list of free incoming calls. For example, I discovered that at least official Riiing doesn't work in Lebanon.

Here is 09's list of free incoming calls in the Middle East and Africa.


Benin, Guinea, Madeira, Malaysia, Sudan, Sweden, United Arab Emirates, Algeria, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Congo, El Salvador, Faeroes, Gabon, Iran, Kyrgyzstan, Mauritius, Mozambique, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Togo, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe

Bahrain, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Madagascar, Moldova, Namibia, Nigeria, Oman, Pakistan, Senegal, Seychelles, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Yemen


This is a quick and very dirty edit of the list. You will find some stuff in their that is wrong. For example, I don't have a clue where the Seychelles Islands are -- I've heard great things about them, but they may be South Pacific. I deleted the obvious countries, but I cannot keep track of all the Africa nations any more. With respect to the Middle East, it also becomes difficult. Is Pakistan part of the Middle East? I think it is probably part of Asia, but it is a Muslim nation with borders on Middle Eastern nations.