iPhone International Travel

Going to another country can be scary with all the horror stories of people having been charged thousands of dollars because they mistakenly left their data roaming feature on. This is what I learned from traveling to Italy and Costa Rica with my iPhone.

You cannot use your voice or data features on your iPhone unless you activate it with AT&T. Call them on your iPhone at 611 or 1-800-331-0500. If you do not have your iPhone activated internationally your voice and data features will be blocked and you will not be able to use your iPhone, email, web and other features. You can still use it as an ipod and use applications that do not access the data network.

Turn Data Roaming ON (Beware, read the rest of this post before you try this)

To turn data roaming “ON or OFF” goto Settings>General>Network>(tap) Data Roaming to ON or OFF

Get A Data Package if you plan on using the data network

If you decide you want to regularly use the data roaming feature while traveling abroad you should purchase one of the four discount plans that AT&T offers. They range from $24.99 to $199.99 per month. If you don’t do this you must have money to burn. Pay-per-use international data rates are $0.0195/KB (2 cents a Kilobyte) . AT&T gives an example on their website (link above) that says if you open one email with a 5 megapixel picture which takes about 2MB, your pay-per-use charge would be $40.

Turn off your Fetch New Data

If you decide not to use the data roaming feature while traveling or if you still will use it but want to have better control of your data charges you should turn off your Fetch New Data feature. You can goto Settings>Mail,Contacts,Calendars>Fetch New Data, tap to “OFF” and select to Fetch Manually.

This way you can check your email and sync contacts and calendars manually.

Airplane Mode

This turns off voice and data (Internet,email etc...). You can still use the ipod and other applications that do not need these features. Goto Settings> (tap) Airplane Mode to ON

Reset usage statistics when you arrive at your destination

Another important thing to do right when you arrive at your international destination is to reset your usage information on your call minutes and your network data usage. This way you keep tabs on your usage. Goto Settings>General>Usage>Reset Statistics>Reset

Get an AT&T Voice Packgage for $5.99 per month
You get a little bit of a price break on your calls per minute with this plan. If you plan on using your iPhone for more than just a couple of quick calls you probably want to get this. You can compare rates with and without this plan at this AT&T link

Take advantage of the WiFi feature

I was able to use the Internet for free at the airports and some of my hotels or by paying a nominal fee (At one hotel in Costa Rica, I paid 10 dollars for 24 hours of WiFi service and another hotel I was able to use their WiFi for free as long as I sat in the lobby); And of course it’s the fastest connection as well.