426 FYI, and not an endorsement: perhaps a alternative to all those roaming rates ... "A Cellphone Without Borders Early next month, a small company called Cubic Telecom will release what it’s calling the first global mobile phone. Sure, you could always rent a phone or use a phone card when you travel — but then nobody knows how to reach you. Now, most carriers offer special international plans: you pay more a month, you get slightly lower roaming rates. But even they can’t touch the appeal of Cubic’s cellphone. It makes calls to or from any of 214 countries — for 50 to 90 percent off what the big carriers would charge. On this phone, a 20-minute call from the Bahamas costs $5.80 (that’s 90 percent off T-Mobile’s rate). The Cubic price from Russia is 49 cents a minute (90 percent lower than AT&T). And there’s no monthly fee and no commitment for any of this. It works like a prepaid phone, where you put some money in your account and use it up as you talk. At this point, the appropriate world traveler’s response ought to be involuntary drooling, but there’s more to the story. Most of it is more good news, but also more complexity. For example, consider this: at the MaxRoam.com site from Cubic, you can request local phone numbers in up to 50 cities at no charge. Now you can have a Paris number, a London number and a Mexico City number that your friends overseas can use to call your cellphone. No longer must you hand out a series of international phone numbers for each trip you make, or expect your colleagues in the United States to pay $50 a pop to reach you...." more at: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/27/technology/circuits/27pogue.html?em&ex=1191038400&en=a2cd33b4f876aa56&ei=5087%0A 4 2007-09-27T19:49:35Z 0 2008-03-12T12:56:30Z true 17177 false 256 2007-09-29T03:16:35Z Vancouver true false nyt-new-cheap-phone-solves-global-mobile-woes-01 1 2008-03-12T12:56:30Z 6959