Telestial Passport SIM

There's a price war going on among roaming SIM card providers, and anyone traveling overseas can benefit. For smartphone data users, the best bet right now is Telestial's Passport line of SIM cards, with data rates as low as 39 cents per megabyte. That makes it one of our Editors' Choices for roaming SIM cards, at least for the moment.?

Setup and Usage
Most American phones either don't work in Europe, or carriers charge insanely high roaming rates to do so. While the cheapest way to go when traveling is to purchase local SIMs to slot into an unlocked phone, there are plenty of reasons travelers might not be able to. I've been there. I've arrived in Spain on Sunday when the cell phone shops weren't open. I've gotten a SIM card in China, all of whose instructions, and whose phone UI, was solely in Chinese. Special roaming SIMs, designed to be slotted into inexpensive unlocked phones, help with that. You can order them before you leave, they work in multiple countries, and they have clear, English-language instructions, robust websites, and technical support.

We tried a Telestial Passport SIM in an HTC Sensation 4G (4 stars) and an unlocked Huawei U9000 Android-powered smartphone. To activate the SIM, you log into a simple website before you leave the country; there you'll get your free U.S. number. The Passport SIM comes with a both a generic U.S. number and a U.K. number tied to Jersey Telecom. You want to hand out the U.S. number, as it's expensive to call Jersey Telecom phones from pretty much anywhere. SMS messages will appear to come from the Jersey number, although folks can reply to the U.S. number.

Popping the SIM into my Sensation, I got voice and data service immediately after landing in the U.K. I also had no problem in Spain. The U9000 required me to manually set the phone's data APN and choose the roaming provider, which Telestial provided a sheet of instructions for. There's also 24/7 customer service with local numbers in 17 countries.

Dialing is a hybrid of direct-dialing and the old callback system. You direct dial numbers, but then it immediately hangs up and you have to wait to receive a call to connect. I found this less annoying than the traditional callback system used by Cellular Abroad, which makes it impossible to use your phone's address book.

Beyond that, it was smooth sailing. The SIM offers voicemail and quick ways to get your account balance, recharge your card, or talk to customer service. I got 3G speeds in both the U.K. and Spain.

Rates and Features
I spent two weeks with the Passport SIM, using it relatively freely with an Android phone with background data turned off?an absolute must if you're roaming with Android. Turning off background data prevents any app that isn't in the forgeround from using data. I spent $104, including the price of the SIM. That included about 80MB of data, 43 minutes of calls, and 32 outbound text messages.

Telestial's Web-based management page gives extremely detailed call and data usage records, which is a big help. Any data connection, no matter how small, will cost 5 cents?that's the rate for 100KB.?

There are actually three varieties of the Passport SIM: Passport Lite ($5, including $5 in airtime), Passport ($19, with $10 airtime) and Passport Plus ($29, with $10 in airtime.) As you pay more up front, call rates per minute generally go down. There's one exception to this rule: Passport Lite's data rates are actually lower than the higher-ranked cards, with rates starting at 39 cents per megabyte, although its call rates are considerably higher.

The standard Passport card is a decent middle ground. Like all roaming SIMs, Telestial has highly tiered rates. Calling rates are competitive in several dozen countries, with outbound calls of 49 or 84 cents per minute and, most importantly, free incoming calls in 84 countries from Algeria to Zambia. Other SIMs may offer lower outbound rates, but I haven't seen other SIMs with quite such a wide range of places with free incoming calls.

The real show here is data, though. Passport offers its lowest data rates, a luscious 49 cents per megabyte, in 26 countries: Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Greece, Guernsey, Hong Kong, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Jersey, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Romania, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Turkey and the U.K.. Four others (France, the Isle of Man, Monaco and Switzerland) clock in at a competitive $1/MB.

Comparing Telestial's rates to competitors is difficult. I'll focus on our other Editors' Choice, Maxroam (4 stars). Telestial charges up to $30 more up front for its SIM, but Maxroam's data rates bottom out at $1 while Telestial has its 49-cent countries. (Truphone's Tru SIM (3 stars) has even lower data rates, but only in the U.K. and Australia; it's more expensive elsewhere.) Passport offers free incoming calls in more countries than Maxroam does.?

But Maxroam's outbound call and SMS rates from Western Europe to U.S. numbers are lower than Telestial's, at 64 cents/minute and 17 cents per message as compared to 84 cents and 69 cents per message. Telestial also offers a free U.S. number; Maxroam charges $8 for a local number in countries other than the U.K..

Processing my $104 European jaunt, I would have paid about $120 with Maxroam. But if I had used less data and made more calls, Maxroam would have come out ahead.?

Conclusions
The Telestial Passport SIM competes with a steadily growing number of competitors, including Maxroam, Truphone's Tru SIM, and OneSimCard and WorldTravelSIM, which we haven't reviewed but which offer similar features and rates. The Passport costs up to $30 more up front than some Maxroam configurations, but you can make that back if you're a heavy smartphone data user.

The Passport SIM is reliable and easy to manage, and works in a wide variety of phones. It's worthy of our Editors' Choice, although it's going to have to share the award with Maxroam. Heavier data users should go with the Passport; lighter data users should pick Maxroam.

Roaming geeks should also consider XCom Global's rental hotspot (4 stars), which has unlimited data in some countries. That device can connect not only your phone, but also your tablets and PCs. Finally, Boingo Mobile (3.5 stars) sells access to a huge number of Wi-Fi hotspots for an unbeatable $8 per month, but coverage isn't city-wide and varies dramatically from city to city around the world.

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