Pre-paid SIM Card For Egypt

By John Dulaney

When you visit Egypt, you would have your mobile phone with you. During the time you went abroad in the days when mobile telephony did not exist, you had to use the telephone in your hotel rooms to talk to your associates, friends and to your family back home. It came out to be expensive. With the advent of mobile phones, you availed the roaming facility to take your phone with you when-ever you went outside the United States. This roaming feature, provided by your service provider back home, enabled you to be in touch with the world and also allowed you to be available to the people who wanted to get in touch with you. You had made and received calls, for which you had paid dearly. Every call that you made was charged in consideration that you are on roaming and you had paid for your incoming calls too, at roaming charges. The bill that you had received at the end of the month was way out of your budget that you had set. The bill amount was possibly more than the bill you had paid for using the telephone in your hotel room. You would like to economise.

A pre-paid SIM card for Egypt will provide you up to 80% of savings on your airtime usage of you mobile phone. When you buy a pre-paid SIM card for Egypt, you would be getting a local number and your outgoing calls will be charged at local rate. Further, all your incoming calls will be free, no matter where it generates from, and you would not be paying any roaming charges. More-over, since you pre-pay for your calls, you know exactly how much you are spending on your mobile calls. The pre-paid SIM card for Egypt gives you a certain talk time credit, and you can start making calls right away. You can buy recharge coupons from practically any shop in the Egyptian cities to replenish your talk time credit. These coupons are available in many different denominations and you can choose the value of the talk time credit that you would want. In this way, by pre-paying for your calls, you are aware of what you are spending for your phone calls. This helps you to maintain the budget that you have set for the purpose. More-over, you do not receive any of those ‘end of the month’ bills and you do not have to enter into any contract what-so-ever.

A Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) card is a smart card, which is the intelligent module in your mobile phone, enabling you to make and receive calls, including sending and receiving SMS. The SIM card is of a size little smaller than a postage stamp and it goes in a slot at the back of your mobile phone, as you open the back cover. The SIM card holds unique information regarding your calling plan, your SIM card number, the International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI) of your mobile phone and other security details. As you switch on your phone, the information is transmitted to the nearest network tower available in the city in Egypt that you are visiting. This information is checked and after security verification, the network logs you in. You are now ready to use your phone and start sending SMS and make and receive calls. The SIM card also holds your address book, where you store the name and the respective phone numbers of the people who you call frequently. The phone calls that you receive and make are also logged by the SIM card, including the incoming calls that you fail to answer. These are logged by their numbers, along with the respective date and time.

When you buy a pre-paid SIM card for Egypt, you will need a GSM mobile phone to use it. If you possess a GSM phone, it is unlikely that it will work in Egypt. The mobile networks in North America, Canada and few other neighbouring countries, operate on a different GSM frequency band as compared to the rest of the world. The networks in Egypt operate on 900MHz while North America, Canada and few other countries in that region operate on 850MHz and 1900MHz frequency bands. The difference in this operating frequency bands makes your GSM phone incompatible for use in Egypt. Under the circumstances, if you are a frequent traveller visiting different countries abroad, it is desirable that you consider buying a mobile phone, compatible with the frequency bands of the countries that you visit. If you are not much of a frequent traveller, it is economical for you to consider renting such a GSM phone, which may be used with your pre-paid SIM card for Egypt.

Global System for Mobile Communication (GSM) is the second generation (2G) of mobile telephony and replaces the first generation (1G) old analog system. It is the first open structured digital mobile communication technology, developed in Europe and is being used in over 214 countries. GSM has over 80% of subscribers out of the total mobile users in the world. It operates on 4 sets of frequency bands, distributed to the different regions of the world, with a few regions having some common set of frequencies. GSM operates on 850 MHz, 900 MHz, 1800 MHz and 1900 MHz bands, with the networks in North America, Canada and few other neighbouring counties including the countries in the Americas operating on 850MHz and 1900MHz frequency bands. As far as the rest of the countries in the world, majority of the countries use different bandwidths, and this makes your GSM mobile phone incompatible with the networks of those countries.

It is very important for you to know that the GSM phone that you are taking along with you on your visit to Egypt, needs to be SIM unlocked. This would necessarily mean that the GSM phone must be able to work with any SIM card, including the pre-paid SIM card for Egypt. If your phone is SIM locked, it would not work with any other SIM card other than the one which it is meant for. To site an example, when you sign a contract with a service provider, you might have noticed a clause stipulated in the terms of the contract, which said that you must use the services of the provider for a definite period of time, which is typically one year. After you have signed the contract, you would receive a mobile phone, free of cost to you, and the SIM card. This phone is SIM locked and would work only with the SIM provided. This has been done to ensure that you use only the SIM provided by your service provider till the end of the contract. Upon completion of the contract period the service provider assists you in unlocking your phone, when you can use any SIM card of your choice. Therefore, whether you take your GSM phone, buy or rent one, it is essential that you ensure that the phone is not SIM locked.

A pre-paid SIM card for Egypt is affordable and a great saving as well. You pay for your calls as the locals do and all your incoming calls are free. You do not pay for any roaming charges. Being pre-paid you can keep a tab on the money that you are spending to make calls from your GSM phone. You do not enter into any service contracts what-so-ever and you do not receive any bill at the end of the month.

Cell phone use overseas. In 99% of the world the local cellular service standard is called GSM. We use this in the states as well. When combined with a SIM CARD (which usually goes under the battery of the phone) the phone is able to communicate and the SIM CARD also holds the telephone number and memory for pre-paid credit. Rates can be extremely low using this system. For example in 99% of all SIM CARDS incoming calls are free and calls to the states can cost a trifle. Such as, from the UK to the USA 7 cents/minute, from Israel 22 cents, from Australia 27 cents. Yes, USA Dollar cents! There are today even prepaid service providers in the USA offering rates of 10 cents per minute to call anywhere in the US to any type of phone. No contracts, no credit card checks, no bills. Pre-paid always means no minimums no contracts, no obligations. You only pay for the calls made. You'll need an unlocked GSM tri-band or quadband UNLOCKED phone. You can buy factory unlocked phones and sim cards for more than 170 of the 193 countries on earth from http://www.planetomni.com Tel. # 800-514-2984

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