A year or so ago I participated in a conference call with several different organizations working together on a project. An everyday occurrence for me and millions of other “consultants.” But there was something memorable about this call.

The host of the call was on vacation. In China. On a Yangtze River cruise near the Three Gorges Dam. Other participants called in from four different U.S. states, all on mobile phones.

Forget the difficulty coordinating time zones – think about the technology involved in that call. Yet nowadays, we take it for granted.

A similar experience: Last summer, I had to reach a client on a fairly urgent matter. I dialed his regular U.S.-based cell phone number and was connected immediately. Again, nothing unusual about that – except he was walking through the medieval quarter in Tallinn, Estonia, when he answered.

With these recent experiences as context, I was determined to find the best “phone solution” for our trip. My goal was simple. I wanted us to be able to make inexpensive local calls in each country we visited and make it easy for friends and family to reach us wherever we were traveling.

After months of research and some modest real-world testing, here’s what I learned.

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