Roam-as-you-go with new "Mint Card"

UK company Mint Telecom has developed a pre-paid SIM card it says will work in any mobile phone in any country in the world. Furthermore, the SIM will enable fixed priced tariffs, so calls will cost the same no matter where a user is.

Operating on the popular pay-as-you-go principle, the "roaming" SIM will have coverage of 228 networks in 108 countries.

Mint Telecom has roaming agreements with all four mobile networks within the UK. British travellers currently have no control over the network that they are using when making international calls from their mobile phones, as most phones automatically pick up on the strongest local network.

"The drawback of this is that you never know how much the call is going to cost you -- prices vary all around the world", says Jules Torr, national sales director for Mint Telecom.

The "Mint card" charges incoming calls at 43p a minute, and it will cost 85p a minute to make calls. There will also be an SMS service that will allow you to receive messages for free, and send them for 9p.

"The product is not there to replace home networks -- the call price is too expensive for that right now," says Torr.

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