Frommer's community member Drobert360 posted about a little-known tool for international travelers that could potentially save them hundreds on phone charges. The website is http://prepaidwithdata.wikia.com, and country by country, it lists the major available SIM card providers that provide data plans (for Android, iPhone, and iPad) and the ins and outs of each one's plans. Being a wiki, it's updated by users who all have its usefulness in mind.
The PrePaidWithData wiki isn't 100 percent complete — in the United Kingdom, Lebara hasn't been added yet, for example — but there's still reams of information, and no other tool like it is in common use.
Thanks, Drobert360 for pointing us to this terrific tool.
(If the notion of "pre-paid SIM card" is foreign to you, the basics: If you take your American mobile phone with you abroad and use it as-is, you'll rack up head-spinning data and long-distance charges. These days, the bright thing to do is get your mobile phone service provider to "unlock" your phone (only possibly if you've had it long enough; it depends on the provider's rules) so that when you arrive in a foreign country, you may buy a cheap (less than $10) card to slot into your phone while you're abroad. That lets you have a local number while you're there and pay local rates (which you pay for ahead of time—no going over budget), and if it has a data plan, it will also allow you to surf the web and read email at prices that barely amount to anything. You can stay in touch without having to hunt for free wi-fi signals everywhere you go. When you come home, you put your original SIM back in.)
