Should International Travelers Buy Local SIM Cards when arriving in a Foreign Country?

For many years, international travelers thought the best way to reduce the costs of international roaming was to immediately seek out a mobile phone store after touching down on foreign soil and buy a local SIM card. Sure, it could be a bit of a hassle to find a store. You also needed to set up a mobile phone account in foreign country and perhaps in a foreign language and get a phone number which none of your friends, family or colleagues knew, but the savings seemed to justify it. Well, times certainly have changed and the key reason for this change are International Roaming SIM cards.

International Roaming SIM cards, like OneSimCard, offer travelers excellent roaming prices in over 200 countries with many more benefits and much more convenience. Lets begin with price. Today, most international travelers are focused on data and then run a VoIP service like Skype on the data to make their international phone calls. OneSimCard offers data rates as low as $0.02 per MB. At this rate, OneSimCard’s data price is usually better or at least equal to local SIM cards. Since price was the only reason to purchase a local SIM, that reason no longer exists.

In addition, OneSimCard offers numerous additional benefits and much more convenience. OneSimCard is easily purchased on line and shipped to your home or office address prior to trip departure. This allows you to both test the SIM and your phone before traveling and distribute your new international phone number to friends, family and anybody else who needs to reach you. In addition, many countries are now making the purchase of local SIMs more bureaucratic (and time consuming) due to terrorism concerns.

OneSimCard also offers better quality services at your foreign destination. When purchasing a local SIM card, you are buying access only to that carrier’s national network. If their service is weak in some areas, that is the level of service you will receive. OneSimCard is different as they almost always have at least 2 or more network roaming partners in each country. OneSimCard will choose the better signal strength in order to provide its roamers the best possibility service at their current location.

The correct choice is quite clear. Based on price, convenience and quality of service, International Roaming SIMs, like OneSimCard, are the easy choice. There is no need at all to buy a local SIM card ever again.