international

Can anyone recommend a US based provider with superior international
coverage? We travel primarily in western europe, Japan, China and
Australia. It would be nice to find one provider that could cover them
all with one phone.

Thanks.

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› See More: international

"Joseph" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> You will
> however encounter a problem with Japan as it uses a mobile standard
> that is unique to Japan. You'll have to rent a compatible handset
> there and use your GSM SIM in one of their unique handsets. One phone
> is a reality everywhere except Japan.

One of the four mobile standards now in use in Japan is WCDMA-2100. This is
the only one that complies with international standards*. You can buy a
single GSM-900/1800/1900 + WDCMA-2100 phone that will work in Europe, most
of Asia (including Japan) and the US. (I should know, I own one.) However,
AFAIK, none of the US carriers sell such a phone, so you will have to buy it
on your own. One place that was selling them is TigerDirect.com

*Some might claim that PHS is an international standard. Let's not get into
that.
--
Donald Newcomb
DRNewcomb (at) attglobal (dot) net

Joseph wrote:
> On 29 Jul 2005 14:23:55 -0700, [email protected] wrote:
> You will however encounter a problem with Japan as it uses a mobile standard
> that is unique to Japan. You'll have to rent a compatible handset
> there and use your GSM SIM in one of their unique handsets. One phone
> is a reality everywhere except Japan.

Don't know about GSM, but a poster familiar with mobile systems in Japan
said that the Japanese CDMA provider will soon switch the transmit and
receive frequencies on their 850MHz CDMA system, so that they will be
same as the rest of the CDMA world. Japanese CDMA phones are capable of
dealing with either configuration, so they won't have to do a big
equipment swap.