How to Stay Connected with Your Business

How to Stay Connected with Your Business Summer Knowles: Hi I’m Summer Knowles with sbtv.com and today we’re going to speak directly to the business owners on the go about staying connected specifically while abroad. So joining us right is Dave Takushi with Wireless Toys, how can they do that? Dave Takushi: Well there’s a variety of different options that are available, it always depends what you’re going. There are some carriers that is the same technology that‘s available over in your another different parts of the world. Those carriers are AT&T and Tim Oakwood and the technology they use is based on a sim card. Summer Knowles: What are that? Dave Takushi: Sim Card technology, this is called a sim stands for Subscriber Identity Module. Basically, what this does is it holds your phone number. If I take this sim card and put it into my phone it will start working with the phone number that is associated with this or I can move it with another phone. What that — and this is just happens to be of the standard that they use and you’re over and up and a lot of the other parts of the world, not necessarily better standard but just happens to be what they use. The benefits of that are that is if you have a phone like AT&T you’re TM Mobile phone that uses something like a sim card. Then you can typically take your phone and use your phone overseas. Summer Knowles: Roaming charges? Dave Takushi: There are definitely going to be roaming charges when you go overseas and it’s not to say that’s cheap but if you don’t need to be rich then you’ll be rich because of the same phone number that you have or you need to be ever to call around over there or call back the United States. It can be a good way to go. You do have to do a few things first just because you have a phone that uses a sim card doesn’t mean you just go over season it and start using it. You need to make sure that you have a compatible phone. You can do that by coming to one of our stores or you can go call your carrier and say hey can I use my phone overseas and traveling the year or another part of the world. The other thing is that you also need to let the carrier know so that when you’re over there they have your phone set up so that it can pick up the towers that are over there. It is just because your phone will work does it mean that you just take it overseas and start to this to use and you make sure you get it set up for internationally uses. There is no charge on a monthly basis to do that typically but it is a permanent charge that arranges from a dollar a minute to five dollars a minute while you’re over there and there are some other options even looks at to. Summer Knowles: All right the prepaid or a post paid roaming sim card can you talk about that? Dave Takushi: Yeah if you have a phone that is an unlock phone. So there are phone. So there are phones you can purchase that use the sim cards that are unlocked. It means that you can put any sim card in from any carrier that’s compatible and at the end it will all start working. It means that I could take my if this was unlock I could take my TM and my sim card put it in or take an AT&T sim card and put it in there or another type of sim card. Then what you can do is you can do an unlock phone and you can take it overseas then when you’re overseas you can purchase the sim card from them for less money typically by maybe a 100 minutes that you can then use to make calls over there or calls back to you as it can be a lot cheaper options than the dollar to $5.00 a minute that you pay by taking your own phone and your own sim card over there. Summer Knowles: Okay and what the difference quickly between the differences of cards is there a difference? Dave Takushi: There really is a difference other than you know this one is made to work specifically with team moble so it has team always basically setting that it will say and this is one that’s made to work with AT&T. So there exactly the same if I put it in there the only real thing is that phones these days that you buy from team moble or you buy from AT&T are locked to work with nurse specific sim cards because they don’t want you to just taking your phone and putting any chip in kind of makes you stick with them so to speak if you want to use your phone with them. Summer Knowles: Okay so just very quickly one word of advice about thinking and to go abroad. Just a few words, a few advices. Dave Takushi: First thing is probably plan ahead and you know plan more than you know a couple of days and ahead if you want to go overseas. We do have a lot of customers that come in two days before they’re going overseas and say what are we going to need to do and you can sometimes take a little bit more than that. If you don’t have a phone that’s unlock, if you don’t have a phone with AT&T or team moble you can come in to one of our stores or to other places, some of our stores will actually rent phones so you can actually rent and unlock phones or purchase an unlock phone that you can maintain over there. So you know the main piece of advise is you know plan a week, two weeks in advance to know if you’re on a one phone service so that you can in and we can help you out and figure out, hey here’s the best way fit to go and based on how long you're’ going to be there and how you’re going to use it. Summer Knowles: Okay so we just going to fight that urgent and destination right now. Dave Takushi: Exactly. There's always a lot to do but try to plan and have to do that. Summer Knowles: Okay thank you Dave. Okay for additional tips on how to stay connected well abroad. Go to our website sbtv.com where small business is our only business.