North Korea allows tourists to rent phones or SIM cards, but doesn't include internet

North Korea (which recently added Google's Eric Schmidt to its guest book) will begin loosening its restrictions on foreign cellphones, allowing any arrivals to either pick up a rental phone or SIM card from service provider Koryolink. With a rental booth already set up in Pyongyang airport, you'll be able to dial out to numbers abroad, foreign embassies and international hotels. However, the SIMs (priced at around $67) won't allow you to call locals, nor will they offer any internet data -- not even EDGE. Apparently, providing data to the rental SIMs in North Korea wouldn't be a technical issue, but dependent on whether it's granted approval by the DPRK government.

Image credit: Wikipedia Creative Commons

Filed under: Cellphones, Internet, Mobile

Comments

Via: The Verge

Source: AP (The Guardian), Xinhua