It's been a very long time since I needed to bring a separate phone for international travel; while some US carriers had GSM even in the 2G days the phones were often lacking needed frequency bands, so a local or multiband phone was worthwhile. Once I had phones that covered the needed bands, I would buy a local SIM rather than paying exorbitant roaming costs (since I only got unlocked phones).
My current phone (iPhone 15 Pro) has a quad-band GSM/EDGE phone buried within it as a fallback if none of the dozens of 5G or LTE bands are working...but no SIM slot even if I wanted to get a local SIM card. (I haven't tried the multiple eSIM support.) Though I haven't bothered to get a local SIM of any sort in years, since my current plan has a generally solid international roaming setup. (My usual travel destination has been Germany, where T-Mobile's majority owner provides service, so I suspect it wouldn't have depended on Syniverse.)
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It's been a very long time since I needed to bring a separate phone for international travel; while some US carriers had GSM even in the 2G days the phones were often lacking needed frequency bands, so a local or multiband phone was worthwhile. Once I had phones that covered the needed bands, I would buy a local SIM rather than paying exorbitant roaming costs (since I only got unlocked phones).
My current phone (iPhone 15 Pro) has a quad-band GSM/EDGE phone buried within it as a fallback if none of the dozens of 5G or LTE bands are working...but no SIM slot even if I wanted to get a local SIM card. (I haven't tried the multiple eSIM support.) Though I haven't bothered to get a local SIM of any sort in years, since my current plan has a generally solid international roaming setup. (My usual travel destination has been Germany, where T-Mobile's majority owner provides service, so I suspect it wouldn't have depended on Syniverse.)