Cheapest sms with an international sim card?

[Dubrock]

I'm going to travel the world for a year and am looking for cheap way to sms. I just found that UM ICQ has a rather low sms rate € 0,19, but has no roaming agreements in Chili, Bolivia, Panama, Fiji, New Zealand, Laos and Nepal. So not so useful. 09 sim has roaming in almost all counties I come, but has an sms rate of €0,39, And then I read something about Hop, they have sms for $0,10, but aren't any good outside Africa.

I do know local cards are often cheaper for smsing, I already know most rates, but am looking for a sim I can use at least in most countries.

[fedeprovenza]

I think Travelsim is the best offer even if sms are not very cheap, but you can call in Chili, Bolivia, Panama, New Zealand, and Japan. Take a look http://travelsimshop.it/?ref=V8OEK

[Dubrock]

That doesn't bring me much unfortunately. I already have a few sim cards that are a cheaper to call with and receive calls with than travelsim (09 sim, and go globals sim especially, but I have UM, UM+, Air Baltic Card and Max Roam as well).

I am specifically looking for sms. Max Roam is rather cheap with € 0,20 in quite a few countries but is 52 cents in a some countries as well, and doesn't have a coverage as 09.

[DRNewcomb]

If you have a SIM that supports data and a phone that does Java, then smsBug can be pretty cheap. Sending SMS to most places is 3cts. The GPRS connection costs perhaps 2 or 3cts per message. So the total is about 5 or 6 cts per message.

[Dubrock]

That looks better indeed!

I've been looking for a Dutch provider that has a pay as you go that offer good data roaming rates. The problem is the increments at which they charge. Rabomobiel is the best I've found so far, they charge at least 25 kB, which is about 36 eurocents, which isn't close to the 3 cents you mentioned. Do you know a prepaid, international or national that charges in 1 kB increments, and has preferably low rates? A friend of mine told me a sms would be 1 kB max, can anybody confirm that?

[VladS]

Virgin Mobile UK charges in 1k increments, however GPRS based SMS providers do add some overhead to the message size. With SMSBUG the average message size is in the 3-4k range.

[Bossman]

Very true that nothing beats local sim, as I am currently using MTN in Nigeria and sms is about $0.08. However, I have used my virgin UK sim with smsbug in several countries and it's quite cheap at about $0.06/sms total.

PS. Data rates are so cheap here it's like a joke. I sign up for the $5/50 MB daily deal on MTN.

[Effendi]

I prefer MobiSMS to SMSbug, but they are both good services.
Wind also was a very good solution with 1KB increments and plenty of GPRS roaming agreements but in the last 4 months most of those agreements don't work

[Bossman]

Same here Effendi. I prefer mobiSMS.

[DRNewcomb]

Originally Posted by Dubrock

That looks better indeed!
Do you know a prepaid, international or national that charges in 1 kB increments, and has preferably low rates?

Back before I stupidly let my Wind SIM die , one technique I would use to keep it active would be to check my smsBug balance. This used just a few bytes and the charge was only about 1ct or 2ct.