[Stu]

I'm jumping into this message late so my clarifications may be a day late and a dollar short. The unlimited data packages for the iPhone and Blackberry apply to most countries, not just the UK. I've said many times before that prepaids in the UK were one of the UK's few bargains.

I pack a contract U.S. Blackberry with an unlimited international plan and an unlocked Nokia E66 fully equipped with VOIP software, Jokuspot, a hacked copy of the Skype for 3 designed to run on non-3 phones, a credit card dialing app outlined elsewhere, and a few other tricks. My Blackberry has an web app to trigger call backs, an SMS program, various entertainment apps, push e-mail, a BES account, and some programs to work with my notebook. Unless I'm going to the UK or the UAE, I usually arrive in the E66 with a roaming SIM in my E66.

Sometimes it is not that easy to get prepaid data in a country. I know the Canadian market pretty well and haven't gound great solutions. Wind Canada and Dave may change this, but I'll an AWS 1700mhz card for that to work. Canada is still hooked on three year contracts and wants contracts for data (for a period of years) even if you have a contract cell phone.

In some countries, you need to go through a fair amount of red tape or hide behind a front person to get a prepaid data card (or voice), e.g. Russia, Japan, India, and Egypt. A prepaid SIM card in the Bahamas will cost US$100 for the SIM card and then they will rob you on the data.

If you travel abroad a fair amount, you can go through effectively unlimited data whereever you visit. You are not supposed to jailbreak and turn your iPhone into a wifi hotspot or use a program like June Fabric's PDANet or Tether, but if you check many forums, people do everywhere without a problem. Because the iPhone is a data pig, ATT had to exclude a few of the highest priced roaming countries (e.g. Saudi Arabia), but I believe even Russia is included.

In many countries, you'll pay $30 a day for hotel wifi. One day where you don't by the wifi pays the Blackberry or iPhone international subscription. This summer, I'm touring South Africa and won't have wifi for many days. I have an MTN prepaid SIM and could get a gig of data for apx $30 that I could legally use on my laptop, but will probably be able to get buy with my above plan.

I presume my comment about a callback device doesn't require much discussion. I have an Asterisks box and worked out a way to do my own callbacks using a simple web app. This has provided very cheap callback calls. Additionally, I popped for the Skype to Asterisks connector meaning in countries with the Skype for 3 plans, I have have unlimited calls to/from my Asterisks box.

I use Google Voice for unlimited texting to the US and use Fishtext for my foreign texting. Google Voice seems to have no problem receiving text from abroad and will soon be changing Fishtext to spoof my Google Voice number instead of my underlying US Mobile.

My wife is out of the country all the time and her company pays for her Blackberry plan. My plan is more of an extravagance but I can't cancel it because I'm grandfathered.

Shape Services has managed to get Skype working on a Blackberry over data. It will be released to 3g very shortly. iCall works over 3g on an iPhone and lets you make free calls to the UK and very cheap calls to other places. Acrobis just released a SIP client that works over 3g and has push notification of inbound calls over 3g. If you are willing to put up with VOIP calls sometimes imperfect call quality, you are getting effectively unlimited worldwide calls plus e-mail, tons of on device data entertainment, and much more for this fee.

My joke about Vlad is that he has tweaked his VOIP over 3g far more than I have. I've got it working ok, but it is not perfect.

Stu

PS: Andy, if I lived in the UK I could probably survive with a 3 SIM with Skype and 5 quid on it for years.