micky wrote:


The place I'm most likely to go is Israel.

Being possibly the only follower of this newsgroup in Israel, I can tell you
to do nothing until about a month before your trip.

Since October of 1999 until early 2012, there were three cellular service
providers, plus Motorola who sold trunked radio service as if it were cellular.

By the end of 2012 there will be 5 phyiscal networks, Motorola will still be
selling their service (called MIRS here, iDEN in the US) and 4 more virtual
service providers (companies that buy time in bulk from a real SP, and sell
it cheaply to retail customers).

There currently is a price equipment war.

Note that cell phones sold in Israel are always unlocked, there are no
minimum contract lengths and if you buy a phone from a "phone store" instead
of an SP, you can ask for the same deal, so they are not subsidized.

With that said, you can buy a 900/1800 dual band simple phone for 130 NIS on
sale (around $33) and a pay as you go SIM for about half of that, so if you
really want a phone here and yours is locked, one can be had cheaply.

Since everyone is moving to different phones and carriers, there are a lot
of old phones in drawers, being too good to throw out and can't be used by
their owners, so you may be able to get one free if you are visting someone.

It's ALL GSM and the new virtual operators are all 3G only. CDMA/TDMA phones
are bricks.

Geoff.

--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, N3OWJ/4X1GM/KBUH7245/KBUW5379
To put it in terms everyone understands, the US debt is over 150 Facebooks.