Thoughts re telestial? Am looking for hasle free roaming SIM

[Przemolog]

Originally Posted by dem

Hi all. I just started looking into SIMS as a gift for my boyfriend. He travels internationally at least twice per year and invariably makes the mistake of calling from a hotel room, resulting in huge bills. I would like to purchase an unlocked phone and SIM for him. He is not a techie and would not want to change SIMS in different countries, so I need one product tha works in multiple destinations.

I think you should answer some more specific questions before we can help you.
1) What countries does your boyfriend usually visit?
2) Does he want to make calls only, or also to receive?
3) Does he need voicemail and/or SMS messaging?

Please also notice that:
1) Some of international SIMs require internet access to recharge the account online (no auto-debiting of the credit card)
2) Some of international SIMs use euro, not US$ as their "native" currency (so the "final" pricing for a US user depends on the exchange rate and currency convertion costs applied by the credit card company)
3) If you don't buy a SIM bundled with a phone, remeber that may be some SIM/phone compatibilty issues
4) International SIMs have numbers from small European countries: Isle of Man (UK dependency with UK numbering), Estonia, Liechtenstein and Monaco. The only exception is Yackie Mobile where you can choose by yourself a US number (but of course incoming calls are not free and the company itself has suffered from "startup pains" and it's reliabilty was, ehmm, doubtful :P)