Are "international" SIMS becoming obsolete?

[DRNewcomb]

Originally Posted by snidely

Stu and DRN - I look upon you two as the tech gurus here. Can I conclude that some (most?) smart phones, like Iphone and BlackBerry, are (theoretically) able to process voice calls via wifi connection as simply as making regular cell calls? If Blackberrys (Blackberries?) (and Iphones) can be made to do this, that alone would cover a large number of users.

Well, the phone must have WiFi first. I'm not sure what generalizations can be made. I thought that the E61 would do VPN but it turns out that the VPN is so difficult to configure that it is virtually useless. I don't know to what extent carriers go to cripple the phones they sell, even to the extent of disabling factory capabilities.

I usually don't carry a computer any more when I travel because of the email features of the BB - which are very inexpensive.

Stu - I assume there is quite an investment in backend costs for UMA and would have to be installed by the underlying carrier in Estonia, Isle of Mann etc. If what I say about installing a Skype type app in a phone is feasible - that would be much easier to implement.

I'm not so sure it's that difficult. TruPhone does it with an app that logs you onto their SIP service. Once you are logged on they just route your calls via VOIP rather than forwarding to the cell. Now, as I understand it, this is less than UMA. UMA acts more as an alternate air interface. But the idea is that the MVNO can implement a system as an overlay without having to have access to the guts of the cellular switch.

N.B. I thought that Boingo Mobile might be a great way to augment my WiFi access overseas. It is pretty good but you have to take some things they say with a grain of salt. For instance, they list over 10,000 hotspots in Russia.
I started looking for hotspots in various cities. Turns out that something like 9,500 of that 10,000 are the nodes of the Moscow city-wide WiFi system. When you look in other cities, e.g. St. Petersburg, things get pretty slim. St. Petersburg list something like 5 hotels with Boingo Mobile service. Other than Moscow and St. Petersburg I couldn't find any Boingo Mobile hotspots. Bottom line is that I don't think you can really count on WiFi to be there when you need it.