[pct-l] Foreign Hiker - 2 questions and SPOT Connect

[Yoshihiro Murakami]

Dear Eric

Briefly speaking,

My AT&T SIM card is not a prepaid type, it is sold by Mobel Co.in Japan.
Therefore, I hold AT&T phone number permanently. Its cost is around 30
dollar in a year.

My phone is  SONY XPERIA tipo dual ( SIM free type ). I use this phone with
a DeLorme in Reach.
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-OUb-86l_SGk/Uej-lsDC7oI/AAAAAAAAS_M/CiY6UYtbWvk/s1600/P7195776.JPG

It worked fine this summer.

Good night.


2013/9/8 Eric Martinot <eric at martinot.info>

> I live overseas too, and went through this a few years ago.  I ended up
> buying an ATT Go-Phone (pre-paid) smartphone because Verizon didn't seem to
> offer a pre-paid plan for smartphones at the time (may have changed now).
>  After unlocking the Go-Phone smartphone (a major project), I was able use
> it overseas as my primary phone with overseas SIM cards.
>
> I don't know if an ATT Go-Phone (prepaid) SIM card will work in a non-ATT
> phone, someone should verify that before you count on that. (Seems that
> Yoshihiro Murikami's recent PCT-L post implies that that the ATT Go-Phone
> SIM will work in a non-ATT phone.)   If yes, however, ATT won't sell you
> just the SIM card by itself, you have to buy it with a phone.  But you can
> buy a really cheap ATT Go-Phone for $30-40 with a Go-Phone SIM card, and
> then just throw away the phone and use the SIM card.  The biggest problem
> for an overseas hiker is that ATT will only mail the phone/SIM to your
> credit card billing address, so you'd need to have one in the US, I think.
>
> True, ATT service on the trail isn't great.  It was fine in almost all
> trail towns, and at high elevations on the trail with line-of-sight to some
> metro area.  But many times I got a carrier signal of another network, and
> couldn't use it, the phone says "not registered on network" and the
> Go-Phone pre-paid service doesn't allow out-of-network roaming.
>
> I also got a Delorme Inreach to pair (bluetooth) with the ATT Go-Phone
> (Android), and use that for text messages (140-char) when out of range of
> cell service.  Works really well, but its heavy (8 oz.), and requires a
> fairly clear view of the sky, so not in deep valleys, although trees by
> themselves don't seem to bother it.  The Inreach was the first on the
> market to allow two-way communication, so it can receive texts too, but
> SPOT now seems to be providing two-way also?  I'm surprised there hasn't
> been more discussion on PCT-L over the past year about Delorme vs. SPOT, as
> they are now head-to-head competitors it seems, and both useful gear for
> the PCT.
>
>
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-- 
Sincerely
--------------- --------------------------------------
Low Gear (trail name) ---  Low Gear Song was written by Diane with Trail
Hacker and Shroomer  https://sites.google.com/site/completewalker/low-gear

Hiro   ( the short name of Yoshihiro Murakami  村上宣寛 )
facebook  http://www.facebook.com/completewalker
Blogs  http://completewalker.blogspot.jp/
Photo  https://picasaweb.google.com/104620544810418955412/
Backpacking since 1980 in Japan, A foreign member of PCTA;  JMT( 2009,
2010, 2011, 2012), Wind River Range, Glacier NP (2013)

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