Traveler, Phone Home
By Nick Rosen
During the sixteenth century, European monarchs were grateful if they ever received any word from the sailors and explorers they dispatched into terra incognita. Today, for better or worse, the folks at home expect to hear from travelers much more frequently. While sending news home may no longer involve passing letters through a series of Arab spice traders, it can still be costly and time-consuming. It also seems to be the case that the destinations that cause the greatest unease among loved ones– “Wait, honey, are you sure you want to sail the Strait of Malacca?”– are the most difficult from which to communicate. Even if you are in a town with a post office, it can takes weeks for a letter to reach home, which is far too long in our age of instant communication. What, then, are the best ways for travelers to stay in touch?
Surfing Vacation
It turns out that the world wide web is, at this point, pretty much world-wide. Even small cties, from Albania to Zambia, usually have an affordable internet café or two. All of these facilities will allow you to send and
Greek internet cafe, by flickr user Daquella manera
receive messages from an e-mail service like Yahoo! Mail, Hotmail or Gmail. Those places with a faster connection will often let you have voice conversations over Skype, and many also have phone booths from which you can make cheap international phone calls.
Talking on the Go
If you’re on the move a lot, relying on internet cafés can be a pain, and the growth of mobile phone service and internet calling has made it tough to track down public phones in a lot of places. There are other options for staying in touch, however. As a simple solution, you could see if you can bring your mobile phone from home. North American travelers are at a disadvantage here, because only a few phone carriers in the US and Canada have phones that are compatible with the GSM system adopted by the rest of the world. Even if you have a GSM phone, you must make sure it works on the same frequency as the cell network in the country you’re visiting; Europe, Africa, Oceania and most of Asia use the 900 and 1800 bands, while most countries in the Americas run on the 850 and 1900 bands. If you have a quad-band phone, your phone should work anywhere on the GSM network.
If your phone is compatible with the country you are visiting, you can ask your carrier to authorize international roaming on your phone; you’ll often be charged an extra monthly fee and you’ll also have to pay high international roaming charges when you use your phone abroad. Another option is to get your cell phone unlocked, then buy a new SIM card when you arrive at your destination. You’ll have a local phone number and be able to call hotels and restaurants at the local, rather than international, rate, though your calls home will be charged as international calls. You can usually buy pre-paid minutes for these SIM cards from convenience stores. If your phone is not compatible in the country you are visiting, you can always purchase a new or used phone when you arrive, then get a SIM card.
One new and exciting product is mobile internet. If you are going to be in a country for a while, you can see about getting internet service over the mobile network, freeing you from your dependance on internet cafés. The internet can be delivered either to your smartphone or to a modem you plug into the USB drive of your computer. The speed of the connection depends on where you are, but it is often fast enough to use Skype.
USB internet modem, by flickr user whiteafrican
Peter Arnett’s Favorite Way to Call Home
Mobile phones have been a great boon to travelers, but there are still large swathes of the planet that aren’t covered by the cell network. Outdoorsy-types especially will often find themselves trekking, boating and camping in areas with no cell reception. If you are willing to hand over a rather large amount of money, however, you can stay in touch just the same.
Long the domain of boaters, emergency personnel and war correspondents, satellite phones are a valuable tool for anyone who strays far off the beaten path. Skipping the cell network, these phones beam their signal straight into space, and should work anywhere with a clear view of the sky. This technology does not come cheap, however. The phones themselves often cost more than $1,000 and the calls and messages can be extremely costly, as well. One alternative is to rent a satellite phone for the duration of your trip. For this service, you can expect to pay $50-100 per week, plus the cost of any calls you make. It’s not a bargain, but then again, it’s hard to find a spice trader willing to carry your letter from the Strait of Malacca these days.
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