Italians visiting Iowa and Americans travelling in Australia will be able to use their existing GSM (Global System for Mobile communications) phones on local networks, thanks to a tidal wave of new international roaming agreements announced by AT&T Wireless Services Tuesday.
The deals will allow for two-way roaming -- roaming for AT&T Wireless customers in other countries and for customers of telecommunications providers that have signed deals with AT&T Wireless -- in 35 countries and with 41 carriers, according to a statement released by the Redmond, Washington, company.
In order to take advantage of international roaming, users must have the Sony Corp.-L.M. Ericsson Telephone Co. T68i or Siemens AG S46 handsets, since they support multicellular broadcast band access. Future handsets will also offer multiband support.
With the roaming agreements already in place and service running between the companies, roaming is now possible between AT&T Wireless and Optus Mobile Pty Ltd. in Australia, Sonofon and Telia Mobile AB in both Finland and Denmark, Orange Telecom SA in France, O2 Germany GmbH & Co. in Germany, CSL Hong Kong Ltd., Meteor Mobile Communications in Israel, Sterling in India, Telecom Italia Mobile SpA, Russia's Siberian Cellular Systems, Vinaphone in Vietnam and others.