Why is international travel technology so antiquated?

Only the US is not their only large market....... Asia is a big market and with huge growth potential... and multiple SIMs would be huge hit in Asia....

Maybe. But you said " I think that even in the US market there are millions of folks that would love to have 2 SIM cards" and that's what I was discussing I am not as familiar with the Asian market, though I do recall being amazed how popular the iPhone 4 was in Seoul when I spend four days there in the summer... and that's Samsung/LG's home turf!

And if Asia is a huge market (probably no question about that), I don't see why Apple wouldn't try to go the iTunes/iPod route with the iPhone, which means selling Apple-branded mobile service that can roam seamlessly over different networks? At the right price, I'd much prefer that over juggling SIMs.

Koreans are so cell phone crazy that they can carry up to 3-4 phones at a time...

To their credit,i don't recall any annoying "yapping into the cellphone" incidents as I see them here every day... Seemed to me they were mostly using data and OTA digital TV on their devices.

You are correct on all accounts. If you bring back the credit card you have discussed- please do let me know as I will sign up right away.

Because the patents are mine I am pitching it again in SouthEast Asia. We shall see. If i can get one launched again you may rest assured i will let you know. I am expecting it to be limited to US$, Euro, RMB, S$, Yen and maybe not all of those. there are not many people who can justify teh funding accounts, but for those who can this is really quite a deal IMO.

May be worth considering adding CHF and BRL in the mix?

The Real has some regulatory hurdles and a 6% IOF (financial tax) on foreign card transactions so that is not a good play for our audience. The foreign users usually use USD or Euro, and Brasilians in this market always have foreign accounts and actively do not want Real involved.

The Swiss is a different issue. My existing prospect has almost no interest in it because their clients to not want transactions in their Swiss accounts. It was included in the original product but had virtually no transaction activity. The cessation of strict secrecy has changed that somewhat but, old habits die hard.

I'm curious as to why WiFi calling from your smart phone does not suffice for business travel overseas? I understand the need for a SIM phone for longer trips or calling on clients. Are there not enough sufficient hot spots?

1) Incoming calls need constant coverage;
2) Free WiFi is fairly spotty in many places and most people cannot count on it in a normal business day.

Those are my reasons, anyway.

Also, in Europe international travel is much more normal than in the US or Asia- tens of thousands of train, car and ferry boat passengers cross borders daily; people commute between the countries on a regular basis. I've seen people on trains swapping sim cards in their phones.

Yes.... indeed, although it must also be said that many European carriers offer EU wide plans with no roaming charges at reasonable prices.... still I think that the aeronautical concept of redundancy makes a dual or tri SIM card phone very appealing.

Amen... there are also bandwith considerations.

I have seen people swapping sims with me. I have a group of friends/colleagues among which we all swap with each other. That is mostly for Europe and North America. In Asia all my clients have a stock of sims and phones for visitors. Of course all those options make call forwarding cumbersome. Personally, I use my Vonage account to do that for each of my major countries.

Very interesting thread! Can you explain a bit more about these points? I thought the '+' notation (for 'International' numbers) was pretty common -- I've updated all my phone numbers to this format, so they work in any country I'm in -- but you might be talking about some other issue.

Sure.
1) In many countries there are carrier codes that must be added to the prefixes. Those are countries that have deregulated long distance and international from local calls, so require each call to have a LD carrier choice prefixed. I am in one of those, Brazil, right now. In others the international prefix is 0, 00, and sometimes something else. Almost always there is a + ahead of all that, but not always. There is also Skype and a few otehrs that have distinct conventions, but those are nearly always + (full country code) followed by the number.
2) The iPhone convention is irritating to me because when you change the iPhone language option (I do that for three) the telephone directory switches from the default US convention to the dominant format for whatever language you choose.
3) Many countries have a different dialing convention for long distance vs local (as the US and Canada once did) that includes adding a regional code or a 0, then another convention for international. That includes France and the UK BTW.

I have my Skype accounts set up to handle all that. No mobile phone, including smartphones, that I can find, permits geo-based directory structure. Were that to be done all this would be simple to use. It still would be a PITA to set up, but all of us who travel widely already know how to do it. When we don't we know how to look up the answers.

I hope that clarifies the muddy water.

Today I received a solicitation for cellular telephones, including smartphones with as many as four chips. There is suddenly a flood, but not from Apple. Here in Brazil, the 6th largest mobile phone market in the world, they are selling very, very fast, so i was told when I called:

Great idea, this credit card of yours... although I can see why the bank dropped the product... banks like to make money on ForEx and your card was clearly more in the interest of the cardholders and less of the Bankers... it can of course be argued that Bankers still make some money off the floats on the various accounts but in the end, Im thinking that the gains of ForEx are more lucrative.

It was very profitable, mostly because of large balances left on current account deposit. The interchange income (payment to the issuer for use of the card) was astounding with average, yes, average monthly charges at US$140,000, this twenty years ago.

The merger of this bank with another caused dropping of private banking services in several major countries, thus making the product impractical. The acquirer was a much more plebeian outfit.

20 years ago 140K a month average charges on a credit card is incredible! Congratulations!

One of the holders charged a new Rolls Royce to his card, and many of them refueled their airplanes and boats on the card. It was fun, because at teh time the maximum encodable credit limit was US$99,999.99 and almost all of these had limits well above that, so they had to be handled as referrals. Today the technical issues are far easier to resolve.