Remember back in 1998, when most of your friends didn’t even have a mobile phone?

Remember when the most popular phone model in Europe was the NOKIA 5120? The only thing a phone was good for was talk. No texting, no SMS. No “World Wide Web” (what’s that?). No apps, no Facebook…. If you were super cool, you had Snake! As for SIM cards? They were just beginning to be used worldwide, and essentially didn’t exist in the USA. USA networks were all CDMA and TDMA – no SIM swapping possible.

Travellers in the late nineties and early 2000’s had no choices. Travelling abroad meant being out of touch. Mobile phones simply would not work outside of your area. Roaming wasn’t introduced for many years, once it did exist, per-minute prices would quickly add up to the price of your airfare.

Back in 1998, when my little brother Jeremy was studying abroad, he had to make do without a mobile phone. He kept saying there must some sort of solution for tourists to stay in touch. I didn’t think there was a need for such a product – after all, wasn’t the point of going abroad to get away from everything? But he kept insisting – by mail – that phone service for international travellers made sense… and he convinced me.

That is how Jeremy and I formed our first partnership. Since he’s my younger brother, I still like to tell people it was my idea in the first place. At first we invested a lot of money, bought a lot of phones, and we were renting handsets for foreign students. Business boomed, and we expanded to tourists and tour groups. We served many different countries, and eventually moved to providing more SIM cards than phones.

It’s been a long time since 1998. Now most of us are glued to our SMARTPHONES: iPhones and all sorts of Android phones. We don’t want to leave home without them. We are checking our e-mail, schedules, Facebook, and using our favorite apps every few minutes.

Jeremy and I know when you go abroad, your smartphone has to come with you! We know you want to stay in touch, you want to research where to go and what to do, you want to share pictures, post updates and not worry about outrageous roaming prices. And of course, you still want to do that old-fashioned task, make telephone calls.

We’re proud of the TelAway prepaid USA SIM card product, and we know you’ll love it – our past customers assure us they wouldn’t travel to the USA without it!

So thank you from all of us at TelAway for your purchase of a TelAway SIM card. We’re honored to be a part of your holiday!

Have a fun, safe trip, and remember – every now and then, it’s worth listening to your little brother.