[liquix]

Thanks everyone for your responses. I am learning a great deal about international calling.

Stu, thanks for your detailed responses.

02 out of the UK has the most extensive roaming agreements in the world. At least that is my opinion. I was suggesting that you might want to have your UK office obtain a UK SIM for your president as a backup. It is the gold standard. If need be, you can get a US number which will call forward to the UK number.

The UK location, is merely an attraction and we do not have the abilty to send those employees to obtain a sim card. I would need to order it and send it to me.

You can get an 02 SIM with international roaming active from mobal.com, but they mark up the prices significantly. If you have a presence in the UK, get a UK SIM through your UK office. A good call forwarding number to a UK mobile is from voicestick.com. Not only are the rates reasonable, but the service connects quickly. It also places a recording saying "please wait while I connect your call." Since there is sometimes a small delay before connecting to a roaming mobile, this lets the caller know to be patient a second or two longer.

I like this idea. I looked on mobal.com and found this product, is this the O2 sim you were talking about?

Call fowarding is a huge part of this puzzle. I called Cingular and they cannot foward calls to international numbers. I checked out voicestick but this seems to be catered to people who use their laptops as VOIP devices. Also we would like to keep his current number.

Is there a service that fowards your current number to an international number?

Although the two sim card approach sounds like the best bet, I still have some questions:

Is it better to get a pre-paid sim from Orange or o2, or from a world sim company like yackiemobile?

Do any pre-paids exist where data is also included?

Do pre-paids have thier own voicemail box?

Also would a monthly plan without contract from Orange or o2 that had international roaming on it be more beneficial than pre-paid?

Does he really care how much it costs?

To a certain extent, yes he does care, but as long as it is reasonably and it works, he is ok with costs.

The only phone that will do this is an Iridium satellite phone.

He has already dismissed sat phones because of the call quality. He is not too interested in satellite phones because of the loss or reception indoors.