If you travel to Canada and want cellular service for more than emergency use, then plan on purchasing a local SIM card and perhaps using Telestial or another International virtual GSM network provider for inbound service.

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The difference between this rumored deal with Sprint and that of a normal MVNO (Mobile Virtual Network Operator) would be the possible integration of cellphones with VOIP service, something that the traditional phone companies are scared to death of, but integrates perfectly with the current VOIP ambitions of the cable companies.

ENGADGET: Sprint Nextel in talks over cable company partnerships

Three possibilities proposed by Cox: a "peer-to-peer" social network, a cluster of "virtual individual servers" running on a cloud service such as Amazon Elastic Computer Cloud, and "hybrid decentralization, " a mix of the two approaches.

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