Don't take your iPhone abroad

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A simple statement for you: unless you have AT&T stock, don't take your iPhone with you when you go abroad. If, for some crazy reason you decide you moost haf eet, at least do yourself a favor and:

  • disable data roaming
  • disable 3G

You may also want to enable Airplane mode, just to be sure.

I say the above after having returned from two weeks in Ireland. Before we left we signed up for the 20mb international data plan and international roaming. What we didn't do was:

  • sign up for the 30mb data plan
  • sign up for the international calling plan

I believe if we'd signed up for these two we'd probably saved about $100 off the $350 bill that followed soon after our return, but quite possibly not that much.

2 Comments

same true of t-mobile. data

same true of t-mobile. data roamed to the tune of $45 in montreal (i'm from USA) just by having the phone on.

of course, t-mobile was unsympathetic. ("well, if you'd just told us you go to canada all the time, we could have warned you.. we can't read the fine print to every customer that comes in.")

I'm currently traveling for 5

I'm currently traveling for 5 months and I figured out a way to use the maps app without incurring international data roaming charges. Before I head out for the day, I cache the maps I'll need using a Wifi connection and then use the GPS functions of the phone to locate myself (which don't require a data connection). I've posted all of the details here: http://www.howtotraveler.com/2011/03/use-the-iphone-maps-app-internation....

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