Do I still need cell phone service, or do I have other more cost effective options?

Here is a question that has been going through my mind a lot of late.

Frequent travel means that my cell phone is almost constantly roaming, pushing my monthly bill up to an astronomical S$1000-S$1500 a month. Every call is a decision, and as a user of roaming telecom services just calling somebody for a chat or to catch up on an issue is rarely a cost effective option.

Slowly I’m starting to wonder if that isn’t just completely wasted money and if there is a smarter way for me to manage my telecom costs.

Doing away with phone service altogether today just isn’t an option. Anybody in business knows they need to be reachable, but if I did away with cell phone service just how unreachable would I become?

When I’m home in Singapore it is rare that I’m more then ten minutes away from either my desk at home or my desk in the office. The commute is short, it is underground and it is noisy – so I really don’t need a cell phone for that.

When I’m traveling overseas, using the cell phone is usually the most convenient option, but it is hardly the most cost effective one. Charges involve S$20 or S$30 per megabyte of data transferred, and invariably several S$10s per voice call.

So, if I did away with the monthly cell phone bill just what are my other options?

Microsoft Singapore made a complete switch to Office Communications Server a while ago,as a result wherever I have an internet connection I have my phone from my office with me. I carry a bluetooth headset with me that connects straight to my Lenovo laptop.

For my personal calls, I’m probably one of the last people on the planet to discover Skype. It gives me several advantages over a conventional cell phone, one of the most significant for me is that my Skype connection can be called by dialing numbers from various parts of the world. Currently I have convenient numbers that can be dialed by family and friends from Manchester in England, Wellington in New Zealand and Kirkland in Washington State.

So both of those involve a PC, but what about when I’m out of the office and don’t want to boot up my laptop?

Currently I carry a Samsung Omnia i900, it runs Microsoft’s Pocket PC OS and has various connectivity options. The Omnia does not really care if it is getting an Edge, a 3G or a WiFi connection. Skype have a great Windows Mobile client that I can use anywhere I can find a WiFi connection for the device, which is probably just about anywhere in cities across Asia.

So outbound calls, including dialing into one of the multiple conference calls that I participate in every week are covered.

The same for syncing email while I’m on the road. If I can find WiFi then I can sync email from the Omnia.

As I see it, I lose two things by dropping my cell phone service. First of all I lose the ability to receive incoming calls when I’m on the road, most of my life is carefully scheduled so that isn’t much of a problem. I also lose the ability to pick up the phone and call somebody when an idea pops into my head, which is probably a benefit to whoever I would be calling with my random ideas.

So, it seems that the two significant things that I lose are really probably pretty minor, and I’m pretty confident that they are not worth S$1500 a month to me.

What would you do in my situation? If you’re a frequent traveler, what do you do today?