The capital city of Barbados, Bridgetown, is the commercial center where you will find many duty free shops, and you can buy fine jewellery, china, liquor, etc., and those wayside vendors will sell just about anything. The Parliament in Bridgetown was established in 1639 and is the third oldest Parliament in the Commonwealth world. The 375th anniversary of Bridgetown was celebrated quite recently, where concerts, historical lectures, and other functions were held with a recommitment to the renewal and continued development of the capital city.
Located in the north of Barbados is Speightstown, the first commercial centre of Barbados. Speightstown presently, has been revived and restored from the neglect it went through for many years and it is back to its past glory. If you have half a day to spend, Speightstown offers a visit to the art gallery, a sumptuous local lunch at a beachfront restaurant, and many more.
Holetown is a tourist spot and is right in the heart of the tourist district on the west coast of the island. Modern development and history meet in Holetown, being the first settlement of Barbados and the Holetown Monument commemorates the first English landing in Barbados in 1625. In these several years, Holetown has changed much and now, with several excellent restaurants, shopping areas, hotels, residential areas, and night spots, Holetown offers you the ultimate pleasure of a grand holiday.
When you are in Barbados, take a trip to the island Safari, and have an experience of a life-time, with professional guides bringing out the hidden secrets of Barbados. You shall enjoy the nature, the history, the culture and many others and travel through those captivating places. Take a trip in the ‘pirate themed’ wooden schooner and experience the high seas. There are yachts and catamarans available for charters, which you can hire or join a scheduled cruise.
If you are visiting Barbados, you will need to call your associates and friend, abroad and locally, and also your family back home. In olden times, when mobile telephone was not there, you used the telephone in your hotel room to make calls. That was an expensive matter. Then, with the advent of cellular telephone, you have probably visited other countries, taking your mobile with you on ‘roaming’, when you had to pay a special roaming charge, and a charge on top of your outgoing call charges and your incoming as well. The bill that you had received at the end of the month was shocking. You would have perhaps found that the call expenses from your hotel room were far less than the roaming ones.
A pre-paid SIM card for Barbados can save up-to 80% of your call expenses. When you buy a pre-paid SIM card for Barbados, you get a local number and you pay as the locals pay for their calls. Since your SIM card is pre-paid, you will not receive any bills at the end of the month and more-over, you have the means to remain within your budget. When you buy your pre-paid SIM card for Barbados comes with a talk time credit and you can top up this credit by buying recharge coupons or vouchers from practically any of the shops in Barbados. These vouchers come in different denominations and you have the option to buy for the talk time credit that you would want. By pre-paying your call charges, you know exactly how much you are spending on those calls that you are making and have a control on such expenses. The other good thing is that you do not get a monthly bill and you do not have a contact to sign. To learn more about the pre-paid SIM card for Bahamas and the prices, please visit www.planetomni.com/FAQ_sim.shtml offering the best deal for country specific SIM cards.
A Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) card is the one which goes in a slot behind your mobile handset as you take off the back cover. It is of the size a little smaller than postage stamp and is the brain behind all the kind of mobile communication that you have. It has a printed circuit which consists of a microprocessor with memories. In here, your SIM card holds all the unique information about your subscription, such as, your mobile identity number, your telephone number, the circuit card ID (ICCID), the kind of talk plan that you are in, etc. As soon as you switch on your handset, the information is transmitted to the network, which verifies at first before logging you in. Each SIM card is uniquely identified by the International Circuit Card ID (ICCID) as also your mobile handset. The SIM card also holds your address book and not only that, it logs the numbers that you have been calling and the ones you received from, along with the date and time of call. The SIM card provides you with the facility to secure your handset from misuse. To secure your phone you just need to punch in Personal Identification Number (PIN) in your mobile which gets registered with the SIM card.
If you are planning to go to Barbados, you will need a GSM handset. If you have a GSM phone, it is likely that it would work in Barbados. North American and Canadian networks operate on 850MHz and 1900MHz frequency bands, which is different from most of the countries in the world. But with Barbados network operating on 1900MHz, your GSM phone is compatible with that frequency band. The other frequency bands used by the Barbados network are 900MHz and 1800MHz. When buying your pre-paid SIM card for Barbados, you need to be sure that it operates with a service provider in Barbados who operates on 1900MHz. Different service providers in Barbados operate on 4 set of frequencies and these are –
Cable & Wireless Barbados Ltd. - 1900MHz.
Cellular Communications Barbados (Cingular Wireless) - 900MHz and 1900MHz.
Digicel (Barbados) Limited - 900MHz and 1800MHz.
Looking at the above, you will find that only one of the frequency bands match your GSM handset and it is essential that you make sure that your pre-paid SIM card for Barbados has the right network to connect to. Otherwise, you will need to have a mobile phone which is compatible with the GSM frequency bands operated in that country.
Before you take your GSM phone or buy or rent one, you must be sure that your handset is SIM unlocked. SIM locked mobile phones would not work with your pre-paid SIM card for Barbados and in fact will not operate with any other SIM card other than the one meant for that handset. To give you an example, when you sign a contract with a service provider, one of the clauses in your contract might bind you to stay with the service provider for a period of time, usually one year. In return, the service provider has offered you a mobile phone of your choice, free of cost, within the range that the service provider has. When you receive the phone you also receive the SIM card and that SIM card belongs to the phone that you received from the service provider. That phone will not work with any other SIM card and therefore your mobile phone is SIM locked. It is desirable that you find out if the phone that you are taking with you to Barbados is SIM unlocked and it is then only that you can use it with the pre-paid SIM card for Barbados. In case you are taking your GSM phone with you, you will need to find out if it is SIM locked and if so you may consider renting a compatible GSM phone. If you are a frequent traveller, you might consider buying a quad-band phone, which covers all the GSM frequency bands.
Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) is the digital technology in mobile communication. GSM works on 4 frequency bands which are - 850 MHz, 900 MHz, 1800 MHz and 1900 MHz. Since GSM frequencies are allocated differently to different countries in the world, with some frequency bands in common, there are GSM mobile phones which work on multiple frequency bands so as to be compatible from one country to the other. The Quad-band phone can be used in any part of the world. It is compatible with all the GSM frequency bands. This is the type of mobile that you would want if you are a frequent traveller and visit different countries abroad. The Tri-band mobile handsets comply with three GSM frequency bands - 800MHz, 900MHz and 1800MHz. This type of phone will work in the countries where networks are operating in those frequency bands. Then there is the usual dual band ones working on 800MHz and 1900 MHz.
GSM technology is being used by over 214 countries in the world, allowing GSM satellite connectivity when you are out in those areas where terrestrial communication is not available. GSM is a very successful technology and tells a tale of unprecedented global achievement and co-operation and it has grown very rapidly spanning most parts of the world. Statistics say that GSM is now being used by one in every five of the world's population. It has been estimated that till the end of the year 2006, there were 2 billion GSM subscribers, which is 80% of the world's cellular market. Subscriptions to GSM are continually growing with 400 million new customers added in the last 12 months.
A pre-paid SIM card for Barbados saves you dollars to the extent that it provides you 80% of more talk time if you were to spend the same amount as you would if you took your phone with you to Barbados on roaming status. A pre-paid SIM card for Barbados lets you budget your calls, since you know exactly how much you are spending. It is a worry free way to communicate with your associates, friends and family back home. You do not receive any bill at the end of the month and you do not have to sign any contract what-so-ever.
For more information and better competitive prices for country specific SIM card and rented GSM handset, please visit www.planetomni.com/FAQ_gsm.shtml and www.planetomni.com/FAQ_sim.shtml
Cell phone use overseas. In 99% of the world the local cellular service standard is called GSM. We use this in the states as well. When combined with a SIM CARD (which usually goes under the battery of the phone) the phone is able to communicate and the SIM CARD also holds the telephone number and memory for pre-paid credit. Rates can be extremely low using this system. For example in 99% of all SIM CARDS incoming calls are free and calls to the states can cost a trifle. Such as, from the UK to the USA 7 cents/minute, from Israel 22 cents, from Australia 27 cents. Yes, USA Dollar cents! There are today even prepaid service providers in the USA offering rates of 10 cents per minute to call anywhere in the US to any type of phone. No contracts, no credit card checks, no bills. Pre-paid always means no minimums no contracts, no obligations. You only pay for the calls made. You'll need an unlocked GSM tri-band or quadband UNLOCKED phone. You can buy factory unlocked phones and sim cards for more than 170 of the 193 countries on earth from http://www.planetomni.com Tel. # 800-514-2984
