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Now, more than ever before it is
imperative to be in contact with home and office when away
from ones home base. With the internet, emails, mobile
telephones and pagers, your choices are endless, but how do
they work when you travel across the seas to conquer a new
market ? Here we look at mobile telephones in Hong Kong and
explain how you as a traveller, whether it be for business or
leisure, can make the most out of your mobile when away.
Today with
GSM, and global roaming it is
very easy for you to be able to stay in touch and be
contactable at all times on your trip. Global Roaming enables
you to travel to a destination and still be able to use your
telephone to receive calls, and make calls at reasonable
prices. The roaming service may need to be activated with your
supplier in your home country, so do check before you leave,
and it is always wise to ask them for the pricing structure to
understand better how it works and more importantly how much
it costs.
Roaming however has one major drawback,
because while you are able to make calls locally (without
using a country code) in the destination that you are, you
will only be able to receive calls if people call your number
and hence country of origin. This means that when you are in
Hong Kong, you would be able to call Pizza Hut by simply
dialing the number, however if a friend or client in Hong Kong
wanted to call your mobile then they would be forced to call
the UK (if you are from the UK) or wherever the country of
origin is. That means that the Hong Kong party calling you is
paying for a long distance call from Hong Kong to let's say
the UK and you are paying for a long distance call from the UK
to Hong Kong !!
This is obviously a very awkward
situation and one that business people would want to avoid
like the plague, not only will your clients probably not want
to call long distance to speak to you in Hong Kong, your
accounts department aren't going to be too happy with the
enormous bills !
Thankfully however there is a very simple
and cost effective solution. You can in Hong Kong buy
"stored value" Sim cards, these cards are normally
in the region of HK$ 200 for a certain number of minutes of
talk time. They normally, depending on the provider allow you
to receive and make calls locally at very good rates and even
call long distance IDD numbers. This is great for people, as
now your clients only need to call a local number to reach you
in Hong Kong. On top of that the sim card is rechargeable so
if you finish the HK$ 200 of talk time you simply add more
value to it and the great news is you get to keep the same
number !
With such an easy and cost effective
solution it is without a doubt the best way to do business
with your mobile while in Hong Kong.
The difficulty will lie more in choosing
the provider, as you will need to watch out on the small print
especially the number of minutes you get for the HK $200. For
example the largest company in Hong Kong is Cable
& Wireless, they offer stored value sim cards that
are valid 180 days, with free caller display, IDD call, and
local calls are charged per minute. Sounds great right ? that
is until you discover that a one minute call will cost you an
enormous HK$ 2.2. The Orange
network however, which is run by the large Hutchinson telecom
company, will cost you again HK$ 200 but the major difference
being that you get 220 minutes of talk time, so they are only
charging you HK$ 0.3 per minute,
an enormous saving when compared to Cable & Wireless. New
World offers you a package but charges you per minute,
with the charges being HK$ 1.20
peak hours and HK$ 0.8 off peak
Unfortunately nothing in life is so
simple and they are a few things you need to watch out for.
Most companies will charge you per minute so make a call of 1
minute and 1 second, you will be charged for two. Also the
cards are normally only valid for 180 days, and after this
period they expire with no refund available, and you loose the
number. To avoid this you can recharge your card the day
before you leave Hong Kong, and the 180 days renews itself
from the day of recharge.
We hope you enjoy your trip to Hong
Kong and that
you find this review of using mobile telephones in Hong Kong
useful. We also have articles on Using
Mobile Telephones in Singapore and Using Mobile
Telephones in Bangkok. See
also:
Free
Long Distance Calls when Travelling
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