Pre-paid cellphones are going international: a new “roaming” SIM card lets
travellers make cellphone calls abroad without paying a fortune. Normally,
cellphone users pay heavy charges to make calls while abroad, and most pre-paid
phones can only call their home country. But now British company Mint Telecom
and Swisscom of Switzerland have come up with an answer. When travelling abroad,
you replace your standard SIM card with a new “Mint card”. This lets you make
calls from up to 112 other countries—where Swisscom has bought job lots of
airtime—at a cost of 85p a minute to make calls, and 43p to receive
them.
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