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Ask HN: What's currently the best way to get global phone service?

3 points by Vivtek ↗ HN
I'm looking to upgrade my dinosaur-age mobile phone to an Android. I'm currently living in the States, but I'll be in Puerto Rico for a couple of months during the winter and going to Hungary for a year or so in the spring. I don't know when I'll be back in the States. Never, maybe. Or maybe next fall, just depending on how life turns out.

The question: is it better just to get new service in Hungary, or is it practical to have a global service of some kind?

5 comments

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Vivtek
(And of course I could always just do everything through Twilio. I think I'm in love.)
kitcar
Global SIM cards tend to use VOIP dial-back tricks to use the "free incoming calls" features of most countries to make outgoing calls "free" as wel1 - but they still charge you for the outgoing call. I find this results in poorer general service (as sometimes the call doesn't connect), and you get seriously degraded call quality as a result.

After trying the Worldsim for a number of years I found a better solution for my needs: Get an unlocked phone, buy a SIM card locally, and then redirect a SIP # for didww.com or similar to your local number so people in the US can still call you easily / you can maintain your US phone #. You'll get the service quality of having a local provider (as well as the affordable cost), as well as the convenience of having your number from home. When you jump to a new country, just re-forward your DID. You will pay long distance for the DID forwarding, but it will be minimal for most countries (1-2c /min)

runjake
Buy an unlocked GSM phone. When you arrive in-country, buy a prepaid SIM card. Put it in your phone.

It might also be ideal to get a Google Voice # and temporarily forward it to whatever your temp # is.

veidr
Google Voice refuses to forward to a non-US number, so that doesn't work without forwarding your Google Voice number to some other phone forwarding service, which gets messy in a hurry...
Vivtek
Twilio, though, is happy to forward overseas.