Mobal

By now everyone owns a cell phone and could not imagine living without one (some of my friends no longer have a land line); but what if you don't have a cell phone that works overseas, and you are traveling outside the US?

Only AT&T and T-Mobile offer phones that work outside the US, but if you don't want to get one of the ones that include GSM (the standard for most other countries except the US and Japan), you can rent one or buy one from Mobal. The company has already gotten good reviews from Time, Inc, and Frommer's, so they are (hopefully) going to be around for awhile. The nice thing about renting or buying a cell phone for your international use is that you don't have to upgrade your phone or service contract on your US cell phone to include international calling.

If you buy a phone with Mobal, they allow you to keep an international number and the phone for life with no monthly fees; it is literally a pay as you go plan unlike some of the prepaid phone plans offered here which require minimum monthly fees. The charges are reasonable too; to buy a phone, you have a choice of phones ranging in price from $49-$179 and rates for calls are anywhere from $0.99 cents a minute within the foreign country to $3.95 calling outside the country, (this is the highest price I found for calls to the US from India) and $0.80 text messages. All this is very good value considering that I use AT&T, and my calls from France to the US cost me $1.95 a minute using my US cell phone. If you don't want to buy a phone, Mobal also offer rentals for places like Japan for only $7 a day (calling the US from Japan costs $1.79 a minute, but text messages are only $0.80 each). Mobal is a UK company so the SIM card they provide with your phone is UK based.

It's a great option to have a local cell phone when you are traveling abroad, and with Mobal you can leave your US cell phone at home.