Last week I went over what the SIM Card is, and why you may need to unlock your phone in order to change SIM Cards. I just have to quickly cover one more thing before we can finally get into our discussion of what to do with your phone while traveling, and that's the concept of GSM bands.
A GSM band is, put simply, the frequency at which your mobile phone operates. Most of the world's cellular networks operate on the 900 and 1800 bands, but in North America there's a stronger tendency to use 850 and 1900. So what does it all mean? Basically think of it like a radio, except that your phone is locked into a specific station. If you buy a really simple phone in Canada it could be set to only operate in the 850/1900 band, which means that it simply won't work if you take it to some place like Europe. The good news here is that a lot of phone manufacturers these days realize that people like to travel with their phones and it's becoming more and more common to see phones that will operate in all four frequency bands. You'll often find these marketed as Quad-band, or World Phones. It's something to keep in mind if you think you'll be taking your phone with you while traveling.
Okay, time to take that all into consideration. As I stated last week, there's not always a clear cut "best" solution to the problem of traveling with a cell phone, so I'm going to break it down into your options so we can look at what needs to be considered.
OPTION 1: Get a SIM in your destination country
The most compelling reason to do this would be that if you wanted your phone for making local calls. If the reason you're brining your cell along is to get in touch with friends in the country your visiting, making reservations, etc., then it may be advisable to get a SIM in your destination country so that all your calls will be local. This may be especially useful if you're planning on staying for awhile. If you're going to be abroad for a year you may be able to sign up for a plan with a local cell phone provider and get good rates. The only sub-option to this is whether or not you take your own phone with you. Taking your own phone and putting a local SIM card in it will give you the familiarity of your own handset and will save you from having to buy or rent a handset when you get there. Obviously this will only work if your phone operates in the appropriate GSM band, and is unlocked. If you're staying for a very long time and signing up for a contract anyway it might just be easier to get a phone with your destination cell phone provider.
It should be noted in this particular discussion that even if you're planning on using your phone to call home, it may still be viable to get a SIM card at your destination depending on the long-distance rates they are offering. It would be a worthwhile exercise to look up the long-distance plans of cell phone providers in the country you're planning on visiting.
OPTION 2: Rent a phone in your destination country, use your own SIM
This option is really only necessary if you want to have your own SIM (which we will discuss further in Option 3) but your handset doesn't operate in the GSM band of the country you're visiting. This is actually the option that I used while I was in Japan, probably needlessly. That was another one of these situations where I rented a handset because "I read somewhere that you need to get a phone there, and then take the chip from your phone... or something." I'm quite certain that the phone I had at the time would have worked fine, but I didn't understand all of this GSM/SIM nonsense at the time. Keep in mind though that this is an option in a lot of places, so if you want to have your own SIM but you don't have a World Phone you may be able to rent one. I actually got mine in the airport in Japan, and I think it cost me around $50 per week.
OPTION 3: Just take your own phone
The final option in our list may actually end up being the best in a lot of situations, and I actually think that a lot of people disregard this option because they weren't really aware that it was an option to begin with. Assuming that you've got a phone that's working in the correct GSM band you should be able to just fire it up in your destination country and get on the local carrier. It's going to take awhile for your phone to pick up the carrier because it's going to be looking for your local carrier first, but it will get the connection in a couple minutes. The only thing that would stop this from working is if your local carrier doesn't have any roaming agreements with the carriers in your destination country. You should be able to look this up fairly easily on your carrier's website, or give them a call.
So, the big problem with taking your own phone? Roaming charges. This will be the main deciding factor in whether it's cheaper to bring your own phone, or get a SIM while you're away. You'll have to compare the cost of a cell plan in your destination to that of the roaming charges, taking into consideration your expected usage pattern. That's why this isn't really a cut-and-dry discussion.
Something to keep in mind though, is that more and more we're seeing service providers in Canada and the US trying to make roaming more affordable. If you go get a SIM card in another country, whether because it's cheaper or you think you have to, your normal cell carrier isn't getting any money from you. Of course, they hate that. So they want to make roaming an attractive option. There have always been roaming plans out there for people who travel frequently between Canada and the US, where you'll pay a higher monthly rate but the roaming fees will be significantly lower. Recently many North American service providers have been making those plans available on a temporary basis. The idea here is that if you're going to be abroad for a week or two you would call your cell provider, let them know when you're going to be away, and they'd put you on a roaming plan just for the time that you'll be out of the country. You'll pay a fee for this, but the roaming costs will be significantly reduced. My carrier, Rogers, has recently started advertising this, and I saw some Verizon customers in the US discussing this option on message boards. I'm not sure how widespread this option is becoming, but it's certainly worth exploring.
Well, there you have it. I wish I could just say "do this" and clear up any issues you may have regarding cell phone usage while abroad, but it's not really that straightforward. If you think that you'll want to have a cell phone with you while you travel I strongly recommend starting your research in advance, finding out what kind of options are available to you in your destination country. Armed with that knowledge, phone your cell phone provider and see what kind of options they'll provide. Know your phone, and know your destination, and you should be able to come up with a solution.
Or just carry a laptop, stay in a hotel with WiFi, and use Skype. Yeah, just do that.
Tuesday 23 February 2010
Tuesday 16 February 2010
A Chip? Unlocked?
Hello my friends, and welcome to another Tuesday. With the recent addition of "Family Day" in Ontario I'm just coming off a three day weekend, and I used that time to do a bit of research on a topic that my Aunt Jeanette requested: Using Cellphones Abroad.
Believe me folks, this one can get a bit complicated. I'm going to try to cram everything into one article, but if I find this starts to run long I'm going to have to save some of the info for next week. The options available to a traveler who wants to carry a cellphone while on the move are varied, and the best option will depend greatly on not just where you're going, but where you're coming from. I'm by no means an expert on all of this, I've was doing some reading this weekend to clear up a few concepts for myself. With that in mind, I'm probably going to advise at several points throughout this discussion that you clarify any of these points with your cellphone provider.
Now that the disclaimer is out of the way. Let's get to the meat of the problem. To quote one of my Aunt's comments on an earlier post: "I've heard you need a chip and the phone needs to be unlocked?!?"
Yeah, that's about the reaction most people have to this whole cellphone concept, so I'll start with what the "chip" in question is. What people are referring to when they say you need a "chip" is your SIM Card. For those of technical inclination that's your Subscriber Identity Module. You may not have ever seen it, but you all have one of these somewhere in your phone. It's about the thickness of a credit card, is 25mm x 15mm, and has a beveled edge on one corner. Here's a picture illustrating how you'd find it on my phone:
That's pretty much it at the bottom, except that I did some really shoddy photo editing to remove serial numbers and barcodes... this is the Internet after all.
I'll try to simplify exactly what this SIM business is all about. If you look at the name "Subscriber Identity Module" it becomes a little more clear. A phone is just a device, it has a speaker, and a microphone, and some buttons. That SIM card is what makes it YOUR phone. That's what contains information about your service provider, what your phone number is, and is often where information like your address book is stored. The theory there is that if you drop your phone and it breaks you could get a phone of the same model, plug your SIM card into it, and all your contact information and everything will be right there.
So then, that moves us right into this whole "unlocking" concept. Believe it or not, this isn't a universal requirement, although it's something that you're going to bump into a lot more here in North America from what I understand. Anyone who's shopped for a cellphone has probably noticed that they'll practically give you the phone (in some cases they will!) if you sign up for a contract. Case and point, my phone cost me $100 with a 3-year contract. Without said contract that would have been a $650 phone. Yikkes! This is coming from the fact that we pay WAY too much for cellphone service in North America as compared to the civilized world outside. The cellphone providers know this, and they're willing to take a massive loss up-front on the cost of the phone because they know that over 3-years of you paying for phone service they'll make that investment back easily.
This is where the concept of locking comes in. Like I said, burning on the cost of the phone is an investment by the service provider, but they want to do everything in their power to ensure that they get a good return on that investment. That means they don't want you going out, getting the best deal possible on your phone, and then switching service providers. So they've got this nice little collusion with the phone manufacturers in the form of locking. Basically the phone manufacturers will make a phone for a specific service provider that will only work if it has one of that provider's SIM cards in it. So, for example, you'll notice that my phone has a Rogers SIM Card, because that's my service provider. If I went to Telus, signed up for an account and got a SIM Card, it wouldn't work in that phone.
Now to the unlocking business. The phone manufacturers, for whatever reason, have decided that even though they're willing to make these phones lock to a specific service provider, they want to make sure that it's not a permanent condition. So, if you put a SIM from another provider in there you'll have the opportunity to enter in an unlock code, which will then open the phone up to use any SIM card you want. I haven't done this, but it's my understanding that as long as you know the model of your phone and what service provider it's locked to you should be able to find your unlock codes online.
This means that in theory I could unlock my phone, fly to Norway, go to their local telecom, buy a SIM card, put it in my phone, and I'd be walking around with a local phone. My same old phone would now be operating on a Norwegian phone number, and I'd be making local calls for free, and working on whatever sort of a long-distance plan my new Norwegian service provider was offering.
Okay, I'm making the executive decision to stop there. This post is getting fairly long, and that's going to be a lot for some people to digest. I think I've laid the groundwork here for next week's discussion. Now that we understand a little better how our phones work I can really start digging into the pros and cons of the various approaches for using a phone overseas.
See you next week everyone.
Believe me folks, this one can get a bit complicated. I'm going to try to cram everything into one article, but if I find this starts to run long I'm going to have to save some of the info for next week. The options available to a traveler who wants to carry a cellphone while on the move are varied, and the best option will depend greatly on not just where you're going, but where you're coming from. I'm by no means an expert on all of this, I've was doing some reading this weekend to clear up a few concepts for myself. With that in mind, I'm probably going to advise at several points throughout this discussion that you clarify any of these points with your cellphone provider.
Now that the disclaimer is out of the way. Let's get to the meat of the problem. To quote one of my Aunt's comments on an earlier post: "I've heard you need a chip and the phone needs to be unlocked?!?"
Yeah, that's about the reaction most people have to this whole cellphone concept, so I'll start with what the "chip" in question is. What people are referring to when they say you need a "chip" is your SIM Card. For those of technical inclination that's your Subscriber Identity Module. You may not have ever seen it, but you all have one of these somewhere in your phone. It's about the thickness of a credit card, is 25mm x 15mm, and has a beveled edge on one corner. Here's a picture illustrating how you'd find it on my phone:
That's pretty much it at the bottom, except that I did some really shoddy photo editing to remove serial numbers and barcodes... this is the Internet after all.
I'll try to simplify exactly what this SIM business is all about. If you look at the name "Subscriber Identity Module" it becomes a little more clear. A phone is just a device, it has a speaker, and a microphone, and some buttons. That SIM card is what makes it YOUR phone. That's what contains information about your service provider, what your phone number is, and is often where information like your address book is stored. The theory there is that if you drop your phone and it breaks you could get a phone of the same model, plug your SIM card into it, and all your contact information and everything will be right there.
So then, that moves us right into this whole "unlocking" concept. Believe it or not, this isn't a universal requirement, although it's something that you're going to bump into a lot more here in North America from what I understand. Anyone who's shopped for a cellphone has probably noticed that they'll practically give you the phone (in some cases they will!) if you sign up for a contract. Case and point, my phone cost me $100 with a 3-year contract. Without said contract that would have been a $650 phone. Yikkes! This is coming from the fact that we pay WAY too much for cellphone service in North America as compared to the civilized world outside. The cellphone providers know this, and they're willing to take a massive loss up-front on the cost of the phone because they know that over 3-years of you paying for phone service they'll make that investment back easily.
This is where the concept of locking comes in. Like I said, burning on the cost of the phone is an investment by the service provider, but they want to do everything in their power to ensure that they get a good return on that investment. That means they don't want you going out, getting the best deal possible on your phone, and then switching service providers. So they've got this nice little collusion with the phone manufacturers in the form of locking. Basically the phone manufacturers will make a phone for a specific service provider that will only work if it has one of that provider's SIM cards in it. So, for example, you'll notice that my phone has a Rogers SIM Card, because that's my service provider. If I went to Telus, signed up for an account and got a SIM Card, it wouldn't work in that phone.
Now to the unlocking business. The phone manufacturers, for whatever reason, have decided that even though they're willing to make these phones lock to a specific service provider, they want to make sure that it's not a permanent condition. So, if you put a SIM from another provider in there you'll have the opportunity to enter in an unlock code, which will then open the phone up to use any SIM card you want. I haven't done this, but it's my understanding that as long as you know the model of your phone and what service provider it's locked to you should be able to find your unlock codes online.
This means that in theory I could unlock my phone, fly to Norway, go to their local telecom, buy a SIM card, put it in my phone, and I'd be walking around with a local phone. My same old phone would now be operating on a Norwegian phone number, and I'd be making local calls for free, and working on whatever sort of a long-distance plan my new Norwegian service provider was offering.
Okay, I'm making the executive decision to stop there. This post is getting fairly long, and that's going to be a lot for some people to digest. I think I've laid the groundwork here for next week's discussion. Now that we understand a little better how our phones work I can really start digging into the pros and cons of the various approaches for using a phone overseas.
See you next week everyone.
Tuesday 9 February 2010
Corey's Very Topical Wallpaper
In an interesting follow-up to today's earlier blog post, I was at Corey's desk today and this was his wallpaper:
I thought that was a funny coincidence, and right on topic.
Have a good day everyone.
I thought that was a funny coincidence, and right on topic.
Have a good day everyone.
A Follow-up On Electricity Woes
I just wanted to re-post something that Jay left in the comments section of an earlier post regarding my inability to plug my laptop in. He sent the following link:
http://www.kropla.com/electric2.htm
It's a very handy page that lets you know what voltage a specific country uses and what type of plugs they typically use. I think that the big thing to keep in mind is that you really can put any type of plug anywhere, it's the voltage that it really going to make the difference, and even there you'll find that many devices with an external power supply (one of those nice black bricks that you plug that sit between the wall and your device) will convert automatically in the range from 100-220V for you.
If you're going to a country that uses 220V instead of our familiar 110V you MAY need to bring a power converter. However, they tend to be pretty bulky, so check your electronics and see if they'll convert automatically. In my case my camera charger and my laptop will do the full 100-220V range, so I will typically not need to lug around a huge converter. What you will probably need though is a plug adapter. These are tiny little devices that really just take your two or three pronged North American plug and put it into the shape necessary to fit in an international socket. They're quite tiny, and you only need a few different ones to be covered a lot of places in the world. Even carrying one that will convert from a three prong grounded North American plug to a two pronged ungrounded one could save you a real headache. That's actually what I ran into in the Dominican Republic. The plugs that were in my room weren't exactly as shown on the website above, but the key point was that they had no ground prong. By carrying my own adapter I would have solved that issue.
So ultimately what I'm saying is that you should use that website, check the situation for voltage and typical plug type, but still bring a handful of adapters anyway. They're really tiny so they won't take up much room in your luggage, and they could make the difference between being able to use your electronics and not. Even in a country that typically uses a North American style plug, it's what you find in your hotel room that's likely to impact your ability to use your electronics. So, it's the old Scouting moto for today I guess - always be prepared.
Thanks to Jay for the website, and remember to always check back on the comments section everyone, a wealth of interesting information gets posted there. Have a great day!
http://www.kropla.com/electric2.htm
It's a very handy page that lets you know what voltage a specific country uses and what type of plugs they typically use. I think that the big thing to keep in mind is that you really can put any type of plug anywhere, it's the voltage that it really going to make the difference, and even there you'll find that many devices with an external power supply (one of those nice black bricks that you plug that sit between the wall and your device) will convert automatically in the range from 100-220V for you.
If you're going to a country that uses 220V instead of our familiar 110V you MAY need to bring a power converter. However, they tend to be pretty bulky, so check your electronics and see if they'll convert automatically. In my case my camera charger and my laptop will do the full 100-220V range, so I will typically not need to lug around a huge converter. What you will probably need though is a plug adapter. These are tiny little devices that really just take your two or three pronged North American plug and put it into the shape necessary to fit in an international socket. They're quite tiny, and you only need a few different ones to be covered a lot of places in the world. Even carrying one that will convert from a three prong grounded North American plug to a two pronged ungrounded one could save you a real headache. That's actually what I ran into in the Dominican Republic. The plugs that were in my room weren't exactly as shown on the website above, but the key point was that they had no ground prong. By carrying my own adapter I would have solved that issue.
So ultimately what I'm saying is that you should use that website, check the situation for voltage and typical plug type, but still bring a handful of adapters anyway. They're really tiny so they won't take up much room in your luggage, and they could make the difference between being able to use your electronics and not. Even in a country that typically uses a North American style plug, it's what you find in your hotel room that's likely to impact your ability to use your electronics. So, it's the old Scouting moto for today I guess - always be prepared.
Thanks to Jay for the website, and remember to always check back on the comments section everyone, a wealth of interesting information gets posted there. Have a great day!
Tuesday 2 February 2010
Dominican Photos!
Okay, at long last we get some photos from the Dominican Republic! I always seem to end up posting the pictures AFTER I get back don't I? Some techie I am, I always seem to find myself having technical difficulties while away. One of these days I'll get it right. I still don't like to travel without a laptop any more, but I don't think the one I've got right now will make it on many more vacations. I need something with enough battery life that even if I run into outlet issues like I did on this trip that I could still get some blogging done on battery power.
Okay, enough whining about my laptop though. It's photo time! I'll start with some shots from around the resort.
That last one is kind of the iconic part of the Riu Bachata. As the beach hits its Western terminus it sweeps up onto the cliff which juts out into the water. They've built that little pavilion out at the end, presumably for weddings. It's perfect for that because it's completely removed from the rest of the resort. I did see some weddings taking place in the resort, but that could have been because the wind was coming in hard out of the North (I'm facing North while taking that picture) and so that area would be pretty exposed.
This next shot is of our fins, of which I'm very proud.
Gray's fins are on the left, and my new ones are on the right. Those new fins were really excellent, I wish I'd had more time to play around with them while we were there.
I did get to try them out here though.
Paradise Island! You can tell from the shot above just how tiny the island is. You can tell from these next two where it gets its name.
I took a couple of shots from the boat as we were leaving, although that was a bit nerve-wracking at times since we were really flying along the water. There are times when I really should put the tether back on my camera.
Here's one when we slowed down to get into one of the small inlets in the mangroves.
Finally, here's some shots of our new buddies Steve and Trevor. The first shot is Trevor and Graydyn, and the second is Steve and Graydyn. Nobody is in any way drunk in either of these photos.
Alright guys, you've got the cream of the crop in terms of photos. I may post other, more specific ones if I decide to go into more details of a specific day. Enjoy, and I'll talk to you all next week, if not sooner.
Okay, enough whining about my laptop though. It's photo time! I'll start with some shots from around the resort.
That last one is kind of the iconic part of the Riu Bachata. As the beach hits its Western terminus it sweeps up onto the cliff which juts out into the water. They've built that little pavilion out at the end, presumably for weddings. It's perfect for that because it's completely removed from the rest of the resort. I did see some weddings taking place in the resort, but that could have been because the wind was coming in hard out of the North (I'm facing North while taking that picture) and so that area would be pretty exposed.
This next shot is of our fins, of which I'm very proud.
Gray's fins are on the left, and my new ones are on the right. Those new fins were really excellent, I wish I'd had more time to play around with them while we were there.
I did get to try them out here though.
Paradise Island! You can tell from the shot above just how tiny the island is. You can tell from these next two where it gets its name.
I took a couple of shots from the boat as we were leaving, although that was a bit nerve-wracking at times since we were really flying along the water. There are times when I really should put the tether back on my camera.
Here's one when we slowed down to get into one of the small inlets in the mangroves.
Finally, here's some shots of our new buddies Steve and Trevor. The first shot is Trevor and Graydyn, and the second is Steve and Graydyn. Nobody is in any way drunk in either of these photos.
Alright guys, you've got the cream of the crop in terms of photos. I may post other, more specific ones if I decide to go into more details of a specific day. Enjoy, and I'll talk to you all next week, if not sooner.
Monday 1 February 2010
Down The Line
Okay, as promised, here are the videos I shot while zip lining!
I shot that while heading down one of the longer lines in the run. The next video is Graydyn coming down the same line.
Tune in tomorrow for some pictures!
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