Thursday, April 1, 2010

You Can Roam- Can Your Friends?

A few weeks ago we were making one of our semi-regular visits to Mexico. On this trip we had several friends stay in nearby hotels. But we had a heck of a time hooking up with them because their cell phones don’t work down there.

We all take for granted just making a call to each other’s wireless number to make plans for meeting up when away from home. Hotels have pretty much made their room phones superfluous with their ridiculous fees and surcharges. But that’s the old school way of communicating. Even “older” is our expectation that any messages left at the hotel for us would be saved at the front desk. Now it’s more likely left in your room’s voice mail. What, our room has a phone?

Some of our friends just don't know they must enter "001" or "+1" before their US number. This is just one more of those adventures in Roaming, and it certainly extends to more than just making plans with friends while on the road. We also depend on our wireless devices for our access to email and the Internet.

The latest wave of wi-fi capable phones has also opened new horizons for us. We may be headed back to those old school internet cafes just to make phone calls. Our hotel charges up to $70US per week for wi-fi access. So, we're happy to pay international roaming cellular charges...if it works. Some of our friends’ phones didn’t. Which left them on the beach, alone, snoozing, unbothered. Hmm.

We’re keeping up with roaming developments at the Roaming Zone, Mexico Roaming, and at our Cellularmaps web sites.

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