Sometime back I wrote about TravelSIM, a GSM SIM that works in over 170 countries. This was for frequent travelers who trot the global on a monthly basis or even more frequently. It seems that the trend is catching on. Now truphone has launched a new SIM that lets subscribers to be local literally anywhere in the world. Moreover, they won’t even have to buy a new SIM card every time they travel out of country. This also means cheap calling anywhere to the tune of 90% as compared to standard calling rates!

Initially it has been launched for the UK, US and more countries will be added in 2010. The list includes South Africa, Hong Kong, Australia and some European countries as well. There are three different kinds of plans being offered the Starter, UK Holiday Pack and the US/UK Pro Pack. The Starter Pack offers local number and local rates for home country including low cost international calling and global roaming. The Starter pack can be upgraded to the Holiday and Pro bundle for more savings and advantages.

Users can also add a local country rate to their SIMs and pay as the locals. Besides all this the company also has a set of customized apps for the iPhone, Nokia and Android phones (including the Google Nexus One) using which users can make free VOIP calls to truphone, Skype and Google Talk users. Check out the truphone website for more information.

If you are going abroad there exist a number of options for getting mobile access in the intended country. You can either get roaming activated on your existing GSM number (only if your operator has a roaming agreement with an operator in the visiting country) or you can get a new (temporary) connection on reaching that country. There still exists a third option of having a SIM that works in over 170 countries! Welcome to TravelSIM.

This is indeed a new and innovative concept. This is basically an international SIM card, that comes in prepaid and postpaid versions both. The company claims that its services are cheaper as compared to other operators.

Some important features are:

• Savings up to 85 % on international calls.
• Free incoming calls for most of Europe.
• Coverage in over 170 countries.
• Calls and SMS to and from all over the world.
• Ability to add airtime as and when required.
• GPRS

What more can I say? Just check out the TravelSIM website for more info.

There are over 4 billion wireless subscribers the world over and 80% out of them use GSM as their preferred system of communication, that by simple arithmetic would translate to some 3.2 billion humans. GSM has been known to be secure, since it uses a specialized digital modulation GMSK to be exact and also has built in security via the A5/1 Algorithm that was introduced somewhere in 1998. There are various variants of this algo i.e. the 64 bit version and the 128 bit version. Operators the world use different versions, some use the 64 bit while others have shifted to 128 bit version which is more secure.

Karsten Nohl a German engineer has broken the 64 bit version of the A5/1 algorithm and released his research online via BitTorrent. What this means at least theoretically is that voice conversations, SMS, and other E-commerce related financial transactions can be heard/intercepted, over the air. But this is true only for operators who have yet not shifted to the 128 bit A5/1 algorithm of the GSM standard.

Apart from this, hackers would need specialized hardware to eavesdrop in to the wireless GSM link, they would also require advanced Signal Processing software (something that is available thanks to Open Source). The engineer says he did it to coax operators (who haven’t shifted to the more secure version of the encryption) to make the switch. The GSM Group however, has termed Kohl’s work as illegal and adding that, “This is theoretically possible but practically unlikely”. Well whatever that means the fact of the matter is that the security was comprised and this calls for stringent actions.

This should serve as an eye opener for people using GSM systems.