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I hope this is not too off-topic but need some urgent help, which i hope some of our Asian based members or even those in otehr countries may have ideas on.
I do a lot of traveling mainly Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and Singapore, so much that i dont really have a home country! However my main office is in KL but I only spend around 2 months a year there, with the rest of the time equally divided between the other SEA countries, and a few short trips to other places in Asia and further abroad annually.
Because of perceived difficulties of maintaining a mobile phone and the expense, I have never owned one but now am getting pressure to do so.
I am looking for a phone and set up which would enable be to as economically as possible use the same phone in all 4 countries. I belive you can do using such things as SIM cards and a phone that has all 3 GSM types i think such as the latest nokia and motorola and even sony ericson models.
When i went to my local Thailand phone shop however they told me that phones sold in Thailand only work in Thailand and Japan. I thought Sing/Mal/Indo/Thailand worked on the same GSM protocols?
I am interested in discussing with anyone who has had the same requirements and how they solved it. Networks used, phone models used, and how best to keep costs down. Is there any advantage of using a network provider in any particular country, given that Im not in any place more than others? At present i get big hotel bills from phoning internationally from there, and i beleive mobile phone rates are the same or maybe a little bit less so it may even work out cheaper if it works.
Thanks a lot in advance.
I am not an expert on mobile phones, but I think some of the information you've been told is a bit out-of-date. I believe in the past phones bought in Thailand were locked to the network so you couldn't use them elsewhere. Or at least not without getting them 'chipped' first. The other problem was that the major operators used IMEI blocking so if the IMEI number of your phone was not one registered with them then it could not be used - effectively meaning no phones bought outside Thailand could be used. This all changed mid 2002 though - Orange, DTAC and AIS all finally removed the lock. It is now definitely possible to use foreign phones in Thailand (providing the operator abroad hasn't locked the handset, in which case you'd need to get it unlocked first), and to use a Thailand purchased phone abroad.
The cheapest and easiest way to go would be to get local prepay sim cards in each country and swap them around as you go I think. In Thailand, DTAC's DPrompt and AIS's One-2-Call are the two options, AIS is the only one that allows international calls though. I think the SIM card cost alone is only about 500B. I don't know about the other countries you mentioned, sorry.
Triband phones are generally more expensive, and unless you're planning on going to the US then I don't think you'd need one. Like I said though, I'm no expert and some of this could well be wrong!
Anyway, in the region that you told me, sim card for each country is the way to go. You may also wish to see if there are Pre-paid cards where you could get for that specific sim card to load them up.
and don't get hooked on "Texting/SMS"
bon voyage. :)
What do you want to do with the phone?
Everything already said is accurate, but the problem with using different SIM cards is that it can be tough not having just one number to give out.
Also how do you explain it to clients, I would recommend thinking about what you need, and why you need it.
If it is only for emergencies and only for internal use then you may well be able to use multiple Sim cards, if however you want to give out the number you are better of biting the bullet and just buying a regular SIM card wherever has the cheapest roaming charges.
yep I will use the phone as my major client phone contact and it would have to be the same number no matter what country i am in. My clients and partners are from everywhere - Us, Korea, UK, Oz, Malaysia, Singapore, China, Thailand etc and most calls would be international. I think it may still be sensible given what i pay for international calls from hotels at the moment. So if using SIM cards means changing numbers this does not have the functionality I need.
So that means i choose a country and then use roaming for the other 75% of the time im not there (ouch!) Still it may still be cost effective compared to now.
Basically would use it for ways for clients to get me no matter where i am without having to ring head office first to check what hotel and country im staying at. thats the idea.
As a secondary use, I like the idea of having GPRS enabled so i can have a separate email for urgent emails - only clients would have the email address and they would be asked to only send short messages on that particular email.
Also for emergency use for family in different countries.
Cant see myself using SMS much unless for business use. From what i read its not!
I know nothing about mibile phones apart from searching on the internet yesterday and a visit to a phone shop!
(By the way Google and other search engines are terrible at this - or i havent found the right terms - great example of affiliate sites getting in the way of finding useful info, most of them were out of date or had non-working links anyway). CNET-Asia was the best resource i could find for articles on what all the terminology means and models available and prices in Asia (all Singapore pricing though).
One problem I think you may be faced with is people prefer to call locally and it can be quite awkward saying to friends / clients that you are not just around the corner and that the call is costing you money as well. Because if the number is in Malaysia and you are in Singapore and your client calls you from Thailand. The Thai will pay for his charges to Malaysia whereas you will also be paying from Malaysia to Singapore.
It can all get very expensive, would actually recommend looking at getting a 24 hour assistant at one number who can reach you anywhere, and then you can just use the local SIM cards.
it sounds like what i need will be quite expensive, especially for local callers (thx for reminding me that VT!) so i may just stick to email for a few years and see if its gets any simpler..
