Keeping connected on the international scene is all in the translation.

As any international business traveler knows, choosing the right gift for a business counterpart in Tokyo is child's play next to deciphering how to stay in touch while overseas. While mainstream telecom companies have done a great job of enabling roaming within North America, it's not the same once you cross an ocean. Challenges can include phone jacks that actually seem to predate the telephone's invention, dialing patterns as foreign as the traffic rules, and an alphabet's soup of cellular system standards with names like CDMA, TDMA and GSM, any of which, of course, can operate on the 900, 1800, or 1900 MHz frequencies.

These potential complications all fall within the following categories:

Compatibility: Differences in everything from the number of prongs on a plug to the cellular phone system's underlying technology can make your existing tools impossible to use.

Convenience: When you're hopping from city to city on a European sales trip, it's tough for anyone to catch up to you by calling your hotel or sending an e-mail that you may have difficulty retrieving. Time zone differences only exacerbate the inconvenience.

Cost and Control: Dialing back home for an Internet connection or using the hotel phone for overseas calls can be prohibitively expensive. Furthermore, such costs are usually deeply hidden within a hotel charge or the "calling card" section of a thick phone bill.

Accordingly, the first rule of international business travel is, "Don't assume." Ask your ISP, cellular company, or corporate IT or telecom manager whether your services will work overseas and if so, whether your specific destinations fall within their coverage areas or roaming agreements. If the answer is "yes," ask how much it will cost and whether you need any special accessories, such as outlet adapters or voltage converters.

Let's take a closer look at wireless phones and Internet access, and the alternatives available.

Wireless Phones

Outside of North America, the predominant wireless standard is GSM, generally operating on the 900 MHz or 1800 MHz frequencies. Here at home, however, there are a number of legacy analog and newer digital standards, including AMPS, TDMA, CDMA and GSM, and the GSM standard accounts for less than 10% of wireless subscribers. If you are a T-Mobile subscriber, you have a GSM phone. If you are an AT&T or Cingular subscriber, you may have a GSM phone, since these companies operate multiple network types. Call and check, and also ask whether your handset will operate on the overseas frequencies and whether there is a roaming agreement in the specific country that you are planning to visit.

If you are not a GSM subscriber, then you have a number of choices. If you travel overseas quite frequently, you may want to consider switching your cell phone service to one of the GSM providers mentioned above, and purchasing a tri-band "world" phone. However, make sure that the coverage footprint accommodates your North American as well as your overseas travels, since GSM coverage here at home can still be spotty.

If you can't justify switching networks just to accommodate a trip or two per year, or if cost and coverage considerations make it unreasonable, help is available. Boutique telecom suppliers such as Roadpost, Worldcell and Cellhire offer specialized services for overseas travel. These services are backed by knowledge and support that are specific to the international arena.

Satellite Phones

The new generation of handheld satellite phone systems (including iridium, Globalstar and Thuraya) were making more news a couple of years ago for their financial problems than for their product benefits. After a rocky start, however, satellite phones have settled into a small but important niche of the wireless market.

The key attribute of satellite telephony is its extended coverage, which extends beyond the reach of traditional cellular systems that are dependant on land-based antennas. In the case of Iridium, that coverage is truly global, extending from pole-to-pole. However, satellite phones are bulkier and more expensive than cellular phones, and also require "line of sight" to the satellite, which means they can't be used indoors or where there are a lot of obstructions, such as in a city core.

For these reasons, you should consider a satellite phone when traveling beyond the reach of cellular phones, such as on a cruise or in an undeveloped area. While the big telcos tend not to play in this space, the boutique suppliers mentioned above as well as more specialized satellite companies offer a variety of rental and subscription alternatives.

Internet Access

Access to email and corporate networks is also increasingly essential. With high-speed services now supplanting dial-up in most office and home settings, broadband is fast becoming the preferred connection method on the road. To this end, many hotel chains have begun aggressively equipping their guest rooms with wired high-speed access, usually available for a supplementary charge of around $10 per day. To use these services, you need is an Ethernet network card in your notebook computer, which is standard fare these days. Check before you go, however, to insure that your hotel is properly equipped. In Europe, deployment is lagging behind the U.S.

The next frontier for mobile Internet access is WiFi, which is basically high-speed wireless networking. Many offices and homes are already so equipped, and public "hotspots" are rapidly being deployed in places like airports, hotels and coffee shops. If you can get it, use it, as it's fast and (usually) easy. Rates are generally per hour or per session, and you may have to enter into a billing relationship with the particular hotspot operator by entering your credit card information into your browser.

If you're not the type to juggle too many relationships at once, then you may choose to subscribe to a hotspot "aggregator" such as Boingo. For a monthly subscription fee, Boingo delivers a national network of hotspots by collecting hundreds of individual hotspot operators under a single umbrella. The customer benefits are clear: A choice of rate plans to suit your specific requirements, a single billing relationship and a consistent method of accessing WiFi networks.

One step beyond a WiFi aggregator like Boingo are those companies such as iPass and GRIC, which aggregate WiFi with other access methods, including hotel Ethernet and plain oldfashioned dial-up. Why dial-up? Because the inconsistency of high-speed availability in the U.S. is magnified when traveling overseas, and nothing gets more expensive that plugging your modem into your hotel's phone jack and dialing back to L.A. to access the Internet. Simple software on your notebook computer can enable you to connect to more than 25,000 local POPs in over 150 countries (including, of course, the U.S. and Canada).

The Bottom Line

Whether from an individual or a corporate perspective, staying connected while on the road is no longer a luxury. It's a necessity. Luckily, for every problem there's a solution, and it's simply a matter of asking the right questions and deciding which solution is best for you. With the right tools, you can be as connected in Paris, France as in Paris, Texas.

Morris Shawn is President & CEO of Roadpost Inc. For more information, visit www.Roadpost.com.