Traveling abroad is many times a huge pain in the neck. Along with the costs of traveling, renting cars, hotel rooms, and food, one must pay outrageous international plans to use cellphones. There is finally an affordable and easy way to text, call, and use data on your cellphone, regardless of where you travel.

CellBuddy works like this: the technology is in a phone case that not only enables the user to use the phone as normal, but also protects the phone at the same time. The case contains a modem that communicates with the SIM card, which is managed by CellBuddy’s servers. CellBuddy’s servers then enable you to do whatever action you so please; similar to the way AT&T and Verizon allow a person to use his phone every day.

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The CellBuddy Roaming solution from Asaf Naim on Vimeo.

CellBuddy has tapped into an untapped market with virtually no competitors. They say that the global roaming market is more than $50 billion, and the company’s target market, business travelers, represent 65% of that. As a person that travels abroad a lot, I know the aggravation, annoyance, and cost it is to either pay for an international plan with the major mobile carriers or to buy another phone and carry two phones with me at all times. With CellBuddy’s new technology, I could keep my number, use unlimited data, texts, and calls, manage my important emails, and yet pay 90% less than the major mobile carriers!

CellBuddy, an Israeli company based in Tel Aviv, has already tested the technology in the United States and Jordan. The company is still in an early stage, and only has a prototype of the product. The startup also recently won the IBM SmartCamp Israel competition

[bra_team_member member_name=”Elan Yudkowsky” member_position=”Intern at OurCrowd” member_img_src=”https://blog.ourcrowd.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/elan.jpg” member_social_list=”LinkedIn, http://www.linkedin.com/pub/elan-yudkowsky/5a/689/649″ member_columns=”2″]Elan Yudkowsky is an intern at OurCrowd. He will be attending the University of Maryland in the Spring.[/bra_team_member]