Help! Need advice on international phone

[liquidadrenaline00]

I don't see an international forum, but since I do live in the Northeast, I thought this would be a good place to post a question:

I have a friend who has a Sprint phone (Sanyo) and is currently living over in Korea for a year. He would like to be able to call back to the US, hoping to avoid using a Korean calling plan.

Can someone suggest a phone/service that he can buy and have shipped over so that he can call home? The calling cards are driving him nuts.

[pang]

Korea is probably on gsm, so he could activate a US gsm account (ATT, T-mobile, or Cingular) and have the sim chip sent over and buy a tri-band gsm phone and see if it works, there are 3 gsm bands: 800, 1800 and 1900. Or he could buy a tri-band phone and chip in U.S. Asia and Europe operate on 800 and 1800, N. America is on 1900, so that is why he will need a tri-band. He may be paying high rates though.

I suggest he buy a tri-band phone and most countries sell pre-paid sim cards that he can refill as they run out. That way if he calls a local Korean number, it will be a local call. If he has a U.S. gsm sim phone, he might be charged as if the call originated from the U.S.

I'm not a 100% positive about these issues, but he should check first.

[wanderernyc]

This is one I actually know. Korea is on CDMA 800, and Korean CDMA phones are incompatible with US CDMA phones.

Koreans do not use GSM. A traveler going to Korea will have to purchase or rent a Korean handset. While Korea signed a bunch of GSM/CDMA roaming agreements this year, I'm not sure if any of them are with US carriers, and in any case, your friend would need to get a new Korean handset.

If he's living in Korea, getting a Korean mobile service account is undoubtably the simplest answer.