If you travel a lot internationally you most likely wouldn’t dream of leaving your smartphone behind. It is a helpful tool as you can quickly get directions in a foreign city, or change your plane reservations. The only issue is, using your smartphone internationally can get extremely expensive.
The pain of international texting
The New York Times’ Frugal Traveler blog wrote a recent article concerning just how much an international traveler might get charged. Some of the charges include: 50 cents for every text message sent or received, international call rates can be $2, $3, to even $5 a minute, and as far as receiving data, it can cost you up to $15 for every megabyte of data you receive. There are certain things you can do to prevent these charges from occurring.
Stay disconnected
One of the simplest ways to stop charges is obvious, turn your phone off, but this is not a very doable solution for most of us. On top of that most hotels do not even have in-room phones. You could take advantage of your hotel’s Wi-Fi network while you’re in your room. This works for checking mail and looking things up on the Internet, but how about making calls. You can download Skype or Google Voice so you can make calls, it is less costly than the alternatives.
International SIM Cards
Another option is to purchase a SIM card. This only works if your phone company enables you to use other providers. The Frugal Traveler tried out Telestial’s Passport card for $19 and OneSimCard’s Standard card for $30. According to them, both of these worked well and both will give you a main phone number that is not from your home country.
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