[Przemolog]

Originally Posted by DRNewcomb

Here's a bit longer discussion about these Iowa rural phone companies.

Thanks for the link. So, if I understand correctly, the whole Iowa tariff "mess" is caused by the fact that in sparsely populated rural areas the costs of creating the telecom infrastructure (mainly cables, I think) per subscriber are very high, while the expected revenues aren't.

Going back to the subject of the thread - why are international SIMs are "home-based" in small European countries. Of course, the fact they are often a kind of "tax paradises" may play some role but the main reason is that their telecom companies have "no room" to grow on local markets. I suppose that there is similar reason for which GSM-on-ships services are also often provided by companies from small countries (and at least in two cases are the same companies which provide roaming agreements for international SIMs).

I checked roaming partners list of the Polish mobile operators looking for GSM-onships roamings and I found the following

Large countries based
MCP - Norway (an operator "specialised" in "on-ships" roaming)
TIM - Italy
ATT - USA

Small countries based
OceanCell - Landsimmin Iceland
Seanet - Vodafone Malta
P&T Luxembourg
Jersey Telecom
Manx Telecom

Perhaps someone of you knows more examples.