What’s better? Using your own phone with your wireless plan from at home and paying for roaming or to buy a local sim card at arrival?

It depends what you want to do.

If you just want to call home, buying a local sim card can sometimes be cheaper. It depends on the carrier and plan you choose. Maybe your carrier at home offers international calling addons, which is also sometimes cheaper.

If you want mobile broadband for your netbook or smartphone on the go, then local prepaid sim cards are often cheaper.

An example:

Our carrier at home charges $10 / MB when roaming in Australia. Let’s say we need 50 MB of data to check emails, turn-by-turn navigation and a little bit Facebook. That would be $500.

Mobile broadband in Australia – What did we do?

After arrival at Sydney International Airport, we went to an Australian Post office and bought a $2 prepaid sim card for Telstra (one of Australia’s network operators).
We called the activation phone number,  told the agent that we’re tourists and we want to use this sim card on our netbook for the next 2 weeks. The girl from customer service asked for our hotel address, passport numbers and activated the prepaid mobile broadband feature on our sim card. After that we loaded some money on our Telstra account and selected the 1 GB option for $39 AUD.

Now compare

You can do the same with your cell phone or smartphone.

Does my device work abroad?

If you want to use a local sim card, make sure your phone or mobile broadband modem is unlocked and supports the local network. Many phones purchased at carriers are locked. Also check if your phone supports GSM/UMTS and the right frequency bands. GSM and UMTS are commonly used in almost every country.
Hint: Some carriers in the US have CDMA networks, which is a different technology.

Example: The Australian mobile operator Telstra uses 850 Mhz for their 3G network, while Vodafone Australia primarily uses 2100 Mhz (metro areas)  and 900 Mhz.

Checklist:

• phone/mobile broadband device unlocked ?
• supports right network techology (e.g. GSM/UMTS) ?
• supports right frequency bands?

Alternative -  global roaming carrier / traveler sim cards?

You don’t want to use your own sim card or buy a local sim card?
There’s an 3rd alternative. More and more worldwide operators pop out that offer very low roaming prices in almost every country. They advertise their products as global roaming or traveler sim cards. We will review them in one of our next articles.