When GSM first came out I was intrigued by its promise of having a phone that would work all over the world, wherever there was GSM coverage. I thought it'd be a little bit like those old global dial-up systems where all you had to do was put in your AOL account name, and the modem calls made in Osaka or Taipei or wherever became all local calls, included in my fixed monthly AOL fee. And as someone who frequently checked out all sorts of phone-enabled hardware, I liked the idea of a little SIM card that I could pop into any phone or communicator to make it work and act like my phone.
Alas, GSM is a great idea, but here in the good old US of A, telcos quickly locked up everything so that the whole purpose and reason for GSM simply vanished. As a result, when I travel abroad, my iPhone stops being a phone and becomes little more than a landmine that might blow obnoxious charges into my face if I am not careful.
By now, despite paying about US$180/month for our iPhones, my wife and I are used to getting a text from AT&T as soon as we land somewhere abroad that says something like, "Voice rate is $.99/min, data is $19.97/MB. Unlimited domestic plans do NOT apply." Twenty bucks a meg???!!! Is AT&T insane? And, sadly, even if I am willing for fork over a buck a minute for voice calls, more often than not it doesn't work. So much for the promise of GSM.
I know it can be made to work by calling AT&T and arranging for roaming or global service, at a steep price. A colleague recently paid several hundred dollars for a bit of web browsing while on a business trip to Japan. But that's simply not the way it's supposed to be.
As a result, the only thing my iPhone was good for on a recent trip to Mexico was testing a clever gizmo called Fueltank UNO. You can use the UNO to charge your iPhone (or numerous other smartphones via adapter) when there's no outlet nearby or you don't have the time to plug it in somewhere and wait. It isn't very fast, but I managed to charge up my dying iPhone in an hour or so. The Fueltank UNO costs US$39.95 and has become a steady travel companion. Thanks to AT&T I may not be able to use my iPhone to make calls or browse when I am abroad, but at least I can make sure it's always charged.
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