Mobile Phones - GSM roaming?

What a palava!

GSM works everywhere right? Wrong! At least, not in Argentina. Not wanting to pay the rip-off roaming charges (thank you Orange and T-Mobile), I bought a prepay SIM card in Buenos Aires. Simple, cheap, and I had a phone number.

First problem. The number changes depending on where you bought it and who is calling you. The worst of the US and European systems. Drop the leading zero? Yep, but keep it if you want an overseas caller to get through. But only for certain networks. Oh yes, and you´ve got an area code that needs to be replaced with ´11´, but only in Buenos Aires. In the rest of the country you keep it. Sometimes. Stick a ´+54´ at the beginning for Argentina, of course.

Turns out the Buenos Aires SIM card doesn´t work in the rest of the country. Buy another one from a different provider. Turns out that doesn´t work many places, either. Outside cities they still rely on CDMA or some such.

Now you need some credit. I tried buying it from the shop that sold me the SIM card. Reasonble, n´est ce pas? No. I had to get credit from the Argentine equivilent of the post office, not the mobile phone shop! OK, got credit.

Now, let´s make that call. Sorry, you can´t make or receive international calls. Arghhh. Try it, it works, anyway. Cool. Text the number. Sorry, it may be GSM, but it doesn´t support text messaging. Arghhh. But apparently the one I bought in Buenos Aires does.

So, in summary, to receive a mobile call from abroad just follow the following, simple instructions:
1. Buy SIM A in Buenos Aires. Activate. Buy credit.
2. Fly half way across country and buy SIM B.
3. Go to post office and buy credit.
4. Drive across country to find GSM signal.
5. Put SIM B into phone.
6. Text number to international caller (remember leading ´0´, area code, ´11´ substitution, drop ´15´, blah, blah, blah). Tell them to call in 5 minutes.
7. Remove SIM B and insert SIM A.
8. Wait for call.
9. After one hour of waiting, go to bar and buy beer.

American mobile systems suck, and not just in the USA.