S60 Open to new features

Whenever I think about Roaming, I can't help but think of the great song by The B-52s: Roam. Unfortunately, what happened to one of my Nokia colleagues when he roamed--in a foreign country--was not so great. It's great that he could do it--GSM does allow this very easily--but of course there's the roaming bill you get afterwords.

The good news is, if you plan ahead, you can get prepaid data service fairly cheap in many European countries. It's even a reality in the U.S. as well, thanks to the recent introduction of unlimited data on prepaid by AT&T.

Unfortunately, these great deals aren't there in every country. You have to become an expert in navigating the mobile carriers in the countries you frequent. Not to mention managing all those prepaid SIMs and associated accounts to ensure you don't lose your balances.

There are a new breed of carriers coming out--specifically mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs)--that are trying to address this problem by creating a global SIM. The SIMs themselves effectively roam everywhere, i.e. they do not have a "home" country, necessarily. Their prices are likely a bit cheaper than what your local operator will charge for roaming abroad, but are a bit higher than if you bought a local SIM and topped it off. On the other hand, it's only one prepaid account to have to manage and if you do a lot of traveling, it's a worthwhile alternative.

The other cool thing about these global SIMs is that you can often get local numbers in many different countries--at the same time. For example, I could buy one of these global SIMs and get both a U.S. and U.K. number. This would allow people in either country to call me for the price of a in-country call--no matter where I happen to be in the world.

Unfortunately, I am not aware of any of these global SIM operators that provide data services--yet. However, two of the companies I've talked to are working on adding data service. I don't expect the prices to be as good as a local SIM, particularly if the local SIM offers unlimited data, but it will likely be a far cry cheaper than what your operator would charge for roaming data.