Cellular Conundrum

By Daniel Piltch, Marine Computer Systems
(as originally published in Cruising World March 2001 Issue) 
  See Also:

Browsing the Web Via Cell Phone

Calling In From The Wide Blue Yonder

Communication Comparison Charts
 

 

If you think you can cover all your onshore or close-to-shore communication needs with a single cell phone, think again. It's doubtful you could wholly rely on it traveling between Maine and Miami. Mobile-phone networks are a post-Ma-Bell phenomenon, so there's no single sprawling entity to impose a continent-wide series of standards. Consequently, in the United States alone there's a multitude of technologies concurrently in use, some of them utterly incompatible.

Dual-mode phones exist that can handle AMPS (analog) and PCS (digital) signals, switching between networks according to availablity, and there are dual-band phones that use a singlr technology on two frequency bands; for example, GSM uses 900 megahertz and 1,800 megahertz. But don't fall for a sales pitch that claims any single appliance can connect you through any and all combinations of these technologies. You will have to choose the system that you hope will provide the most complete coverage in the regions you expect to need it. Buy carefully, buy a contract that answers your specifications, and make sure the provider lives up to its end of the deal.

If you plan to go to Europe, where the approach to consumer-targeted technology is more homogeneous, a GSM phone will work anywhere, and will even let you talk in Africa and Asia. Moreover, you can buy a phone that accepts SIM cards, data chips that are preprogrammed, and programmableand offer all kinds of useful tricks. On entering a new country, you can buy a local SIM-outlets vary between countries from banks in Croatia to tabacs in France-with a new, local number and a specified amount of calling units.

South America and the Caribbean, because of their ambiguous links to North America and Europe, use a mixture of technologies, so you need to sound out locally what will work for you in individual countries.