I am new to the 8830 and subscribing to Verizon (had and older BlackBerry) and also pretty much clueless about the technical side. The salesperson was almost as clueless as me.
I got the global support sim for free, but after reading the literature it seems as thoughit is useless unless I purchased and additional service. I was led to believe that you just put the global sim in and you are good to go. So do I need to subscribe to a specific service or not, also once having installed the global sim does it stay or does it have to be removed upon returning to the states.

Thanks in advance, I hope I made myself understood..

You have to activate the global roam option for the vzw sim to be any good. From there you can decide on a plan or a pay by minute/kb of data option. Going the pay as you go route is expensive as all hell... which makes it smart to get the global data plan and avoid making phone calls from your bb - get a second phone with a local sim!

You can remove the sim or leave it when you return home. I remove it as a 'just in case' precaution.

The technical site can be good but you have to be specific and know what you want before you call. Which number are you calling? For out of the country stuff always call 9085594899. Someone mentioned a 8034004455 number but it's been over a year since I've called it and can't remember who or what they are/do.

Your sim should also have a passcode?? REMEMBER that... I forgot it once and used up my attempts and then had to get a new sim... that sucked. My sim is almost a year old too so they may have changed that...