Thanks for all the good info. I am now likely to buy a GSM phone and then just buy the SIM cards for the places we will be visiting. That way, I can buy SIM cards for French Polynesia for PIP, buy new cards for the Western Caribbean on Silver Whisper in November, and, of course, a card for South Africa next April on ROAR. The T-Mobile per minute fees with a rental phone were very high ($4.50 or so per minute!!), compared to the Vini (French Polynesia cell phone company) rate of less than half that. Pam, I will definitely look into the WorldRoam options. They look pretty good, although I am not an AmEx cardholder (we keep all of our miles on United Visa). If WorldRoam will deal with us plebians who do not use AmEx Platinum, that may be a good source of both phone and SIM cards. Lordie, this is far too complicated for my simple brain to handle - GSM, SDMA, etc. What happened to the good old days when one would just go on holiday and not contact home for several weeks? Now, we cannot even imagine being out of touch with our housesitter every day. After all, if one of the dogs or the kitty is feeling a bit punk, we have to give suggestions to our housesitter for remedies (ginger biscuits, fresh tuna, valium - for the housesitter). Cheers, Fred