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What is roaming?
Roaming is the ability for a cell phone (or better the SIM card) to automatically
find a (GSM) network when travelling outside the coverage area of the home network.
If you are travelling in your home country and your cell phone is using a not your
home network for a call, it is called national roaming.
If you are travelling abroad and your cell phone is connected to a local network
it is called international roaming.
If you use a GSM cell phone and you are travelling overseas, the advantage of
roaming is that you need only one telephone number and you will get only on bill for all the calls abroad from your provider.
Mostly calls via roaming are a little more expansive than regular calls.
The handset will choose one of the networks listed in the SIM card's preferred list, if a network listed offers sufficient signal. Failing that, it will select any of the networks available, provided that it is giving a strong enough signal. Handsets are supposed to treat all networks equally if the signal exceeds a certain threshold, but in practice, they seem to go for the strongest. That's why the signal always seems strong at airports!
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