Buying a prepaid mobile phone in the UK may soon require a passport

by Scott Carmichael on

Prepaid mobile phones have long been a travelers best friend. In the past, anyone could pop into the local store, and walk out with an activated mobile phone with a local number.

Sadly, visitors to the UK may soon have to add one more step to their prepaid purchase; showing identification. Apparently the UK government has decided that prepaid phones can be used by terrorists. All customers who purchase a prepaid mobile phone or prepaid SIM card will have to be registered in a national database according to a plan that may put in place as early as January 2009.

This step is just the first of what should become a national UK database of all mobile phone users.

The UK is not the first country to make buying a prepaid phone a hassle. Japan has long made it impossible for short term tourists to get their hands on any kind of prepaid solution (other than phone rentals).

Turkey actually goes one step further, demanding that all tourists register their mobile number with the local mobile operator. Visitors who fail to register their number will actually have their service disconnected while in Turkey!

At the end of the day, this is just another bit of security theater made to let us think we are being kept safe. Terrorists will always find ways to get their hands on mobile phone cards, and once again, it is the regular users and tourists who are being inconvenienced.

Garmin Nuviphone delayed till mid 2009

by Scott Carmichael on

Back in January, Garmin announced their first combination of a GPS unit and mobile phone called the Nuviphone.

The Nuviphone was originally slated for Q3 of this year, but this morning, Garmin announced that things were delayed till the first half of 2009 due to “carrier requirements”.

While this delay may seem like bad news, it is actually not all doom and gloom. Having to make changes for mobile phone carriers means there is clearly significant interest in it from the mobile operators which means you should be able to buy the phone directly from your phone company, with a significant discount.

This 3G enabled phone will come preloaded with maps of the US or Europe and even allows you to do online Google searches from inside the map application. By combining a phone and a GPS unit, the Nuviphone also provides online access to gas prices, local weather reports, sports scores and real-time traffic.

In coming years, I’m sure we’ll see more GPS units become connected to the Internet. Magellan are working on one and the Dash Express has been available for several months. As more and more mobile phones add GPS, we’ll see more and more GPS units add a phone. The ability to do an online search for something directly on your GPS unit, is a very powerful feature.

Affordable phone rentals in China with Yoyoor

by Scott Carmichael on

If you are planning to travel to China, then this new service from mobile company Yoyoor sounds like it is worth checking out.

Yoyoor provides rental phone services, and while they are certainly not alone in that segment, their product is quite different from most others.

For just $3.99 a day, you get a GPS enabled Nokia 6110 smartphone with English language maps of China, live personal assistance, emergency support, real time text messaging help from Yoyoor staff and unlimited email/Internet access.

The per-minute calling rate of the phone makes the package even better; calls from China to the US are just $0.60 per minute, with free incoming calls and $0.20 local calls. This rate is a whopping 5 times cheaper than AT&T or T-mobile. Text messages cost $0.20 to send and $0.02 to receive. The free Internet access service will save you even more as AT&T normally charge $19.50 per MB in China.

The English speaking concierge service is preprogrammed on the phone and can provide restaurant recommendations, help with transportation questions and provide language assistance. Calls to the Yoyoor concierge service cost $1 per call plus the airtime charge ($0.20 per minute).

The phone can be reserved online, at one of the Yoyoor aiport desks or through the Yoyoor call center. Yoyoor have rental desks at Beijing and Shanghai international airports.

When you make a reservation, Yoyoor will authorize your credit card for $500, which is the average amount for mobile phone rentals. Once the phone has been returned, that amount will be released back to you.

Returning the phone is easy and can be done at the airport desks, through a courier service in China or by sending it back to their US offices once you get home.

With thousands of US tourists traveling to China for the Olympics, I’m sure Yoyoor will appeal to many people who have never been there, and who could do with a little extra help from the maps and concierge service.

An alternative route to unlocking your phone

by Grant Martin on

If you’ve ever traveled overseas for an extended period of time, you probably looked into getting a mobile phone while you were away.

As you now probably know, using your personal phone can get wildly expensive when you leave the United States, and plugging an alternative carrier’s SIM card into your phone won’t work because domestic phones are “locked” to their carriers.

If you dug a little deeper, you may also know that you can “unlock” your phone in a few different ways, freeing it, so to speak, to communicate with any network that you like. So you could pick up a Vodafone chip in Spain, drop it into the mobile you use in the States and have a new Spanish phone number.

The barrier that many people run into is that unlocking your phone can be tricky. Depending on your model, some require reprogramming from the keypad while others require a professional to do it for you — but it’s almost never anything you can do in a few seconds — so most people give up.

Flopping around the internet today though I discovered a device that will actually do this for you — or virtually do it for that matter. It’s a tiny little chip called an I-Smart Sim that slips under your regular SIM and circumvents the locking mechanism. Seems like a slick way to get around renting your own phone in another country or paying crazy fees.

I’d try it myself, but my phone is already unlocked so I don’t need any augmentation. Perhaps someone else could test it out and let us know how it goes. It’s only seven bucks.

For more information on using using your cell when traveling, check out: How to use your mobile phone abroad.

Skype-Modeled Technology Lets Travelers Mobile-Phone Home for Cheap

by Catherine Bodry on

A Vancouver, Canada-based company, Eqo (“echo”), has developed a new technology that may ease the financial pain of international phone calls. Their model is similar to Skype, the free software that allows users to make calls over the Internet from their computers. When downloaded to a cellphone, Eqo’s software uses the Internet to make cheap calls locally or abroad.

Here’s how it works: First, a user downloads Eqo’s software to the phone. Next, the software automatically organizes existing contacts into the Eqo application.Then, the phone owner can call any Eqo users for free, no matter where they live. But callers won’t only save by calling other Eqo users. The best part about the technology is that calling someone who doesn’t have Eqo is super cheap — around 2 cents per minute. Not a bad deal.

Unfortunately, it takes time to download and figure out how to use the software, so callers might continue to rely on phone cards. Nevertheless, Eqo is available through Europe and the Middle East, with plans to be available in 60 countries by the end of 2008.

Check out the whole article at the Discovery Channel’s website.