> In Europe GSM is synonymous with cell phone (as far as I know analogue cell > phone networks are no longer available to retail customers). You can buy > Pay-As-You-Go SIM cards for less than $20 dollars equivalent. If you want a > new phone with that, you may have to pay a bit more, but not much. I > wouldn't be surprised if these days you can get a phone for 'free' as long as > you buy say, $50 equivalent of Pay-As-You-Go minutes. As long as your phone > is not locked by the provider (or you are prepared to unlock it yourself) it > will work with any provider's SIM card. Also in Europe there are many ISP > dial-up numbers, which will just cost you the price of a local call. These > in the UK start with 0845- and for some/many of these you do not have to > register as a user. Google for 'anonymous free dial up number UK' and you'll > get a long list of 0845- numbers with username & passwds. You can use your > PAYG phone and SIM card to ring any of these numbers. I have not found yet > any dial up numbers which are barred by cell phone providers in the UK or in > Europe (at least Switzerland, France, Germany, Norway, Spain and Greece), but > YMMV. To avoid paying international call rates between different countries > in Europe it would make sense to search and find ISP dial up numbers for each > country that you intend to visit.
Sounds pretty good. Is this a connection in the neighborhood of 14.4k? Will it will work anywhere a GSM signal is had? I searched for free dial up in the US and all I could find was Netzero and Juno which are Windows only. Do you happen to know of a dial up ISP that has numbers all over the world? I wouldn't mind paying for something like that. > All of the above deals with numbers which are dialed up using plain GSM (TDMA > or 2G technology). That's sloooow but cheap if you only intend to stay on > line for short periods of time (e.g. downloading a couple of plain text > emails) since charging is structured around the period of time that you stay > connected. For larger downloads you need more bandwidth which in (most/all? > of) Europe means a GPRS connection (FDMA, or 2.5G) and charging structure: > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Packet_Radio_Service > > With this you can stay connected as long as you want - you only pay for the kb > of data that you up/download. As always Google should be able to show you > loads of deals that are available these days to choose between providers. > PAYG top-up cards containing the necessary codes that register your SIM with > the respective cell phone network are available widely from corner shops and > kiosks. Any GSM cell phone sold today can access both GSM & GPRS services. I got this from a page about bringing a cell phone to Costa Rica: "If you bring it, remember that you will have to see if it is on the ICE list of approved phones, then you will need to pay someone to convert it, then you will have no warranty in either country. Why bother" I guess certain phones only work in certain countries? I thought a GSM phone with a local SIM card would work anywhere there is a GSM network. Actually, wikitravel.org says: "Prepaid Sim cards are not available in Costa Rica." I was looking for a relatively easy way to get online in most places around the world, but maybe GSM isn't it. I swore off WIFI hunting after visiting the Greek island of Corfu, and from jiwire.com it looks like there is still nothing there. Check this out though: http://www.geofone.net/bgan-sale.htm These are lightweight, plenty fast, USB, Bluetooth, ethernet, and the page even mentions Linux. $20/day and $7.95/MB doesn't sound so bad. How can I figure out how much data I send/receive right now during minimal operation? - Grant -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
