Connie is headed out to Senegal. Here’s the mobile operator. I need to get her the right SIM card for her tri-mode phone. Wow, is this complicated. Fortunately John did some research on Spanish SIM cards and such, but Senegal is a little bit farther afield. Here is what I recommend
- Sentel GSM – Services. This is the core carrier over in Senegal. So first thing is to determine what kind of service is available. I love the coverage maps on gsmworld. BTW
- Sentel. This is the carrier and is owned by Millicom. They are 98% prepaid over there, so getting a prepaid card over there shouldn’t be too hard. I’m going to try to find out where that would be, although that might be a hassle for Connie.
- Telestial or Planetomni. Getting a global SIM card. The best seems to Swisscom’s $1/minute anywhere in the world deal. Otherwise, she need a prepaid SIM *and* a calling card.
- 10-10 Phone Rates. An incredibly great web site for dial around service. Right now 1016868 looks like the cheapest long distance for me to call Connie
- IdT Calling Card. I’ve used IDT, but they cost $2/month and have a $25 minimum so you end up spending $1 on calls and then wasting the $25. They charge $0.85 to/from Senegal. Wow, the Swisscom deal is sounding better! The other problem is that IDT doesn’t have a Senegal local access number, so you can’t call back
- Sonatel Senegal. One of the two GSM providers. They even have a web site.
- Calling to Senegal. Here’s how one local does it.
- Calling to Senegal. These guys say they’ll do it for $0.18.
- Nobelcomm. These appear to underlie most of the commercial offers. They charge $1.05 per minute
- Alize Prepay. It’s in French, but here’s the prepay plan for a local Senagal phone. It is 531 FCFA per minute to Western Europe and 236 FCFA to another phone in Senegal. That’s 610 FCFA to the US dollar, so quite reasonable
