Traveling to Spain: Local prepaid SIM or international roaming? Heading to Europe and wondering how you can avoid coming home to a wireless bill as big as your mortgage payment? In this edition of Ask Maggie I offer some advice about using a smartphone abroad to a reader traveling to Spain next week for the Mobile World Congress trade show. Getting a local SIM card to pop into an unlocked GSM phone is likely the cheapest option. But if used carefully, subscribers don't have to sacrifice their kids' college funds to pay for a U. S. Ask Maggie shows you how. Also in this Ask Maggie, I tell one man anxious to upgrade his i. Phone 3. GS to the i. YES CROWD; FORUM; WIKI; BLOG; ASK; Yes Crowd; Yes Crowd. Free Calls to Italy for Optus Customers blog. International SIM card with free. Tired of spending money on roaming fees? OneSimCard is an international. Save 85% or more on international roaming. International roaming; Tablets. Pre-Paid Mobile Broadband. ZTE MF910 Software Update Fail. Phone 4. S to hold on another few months to see what new i. Phone Apple will announce in 2. Local prepaid SIM vs. Anyway, I need help figuring out what to do about using a phone while I am there. This is my first time going to MWC, and I want to know whether I should get a local SIM card for my i. Phone, or if I should just use my existing wireless plan while I am away and hope for the best. I definitely don't want to come home to a $1,0. What's my best option? Thanks,MWC Virgin. Dear MWC Virgin. First of all, glad to hear you will be coming to Barcelona! Mobile World Congress is a terrific and exciting event. And Barcelona is one of the best cities in the world with amazing art and architecture and yummy food and wine. It's my favorite show of the year! Attendees stroll the grounds of the Fira de Barcelona at the 2. Mobile World Congress. Traveling internationally with a cell phone, and especially a smartphone, can be very expensive if you aren't careful. As you noted in your question, there are several stories of people coming home from a trip to find they've racked up hundreds or even thousands of dollars in roaming usage fees. Once you know how much carriers charge to roam onto a foreign carrier's network, you'll understand why. And it charges 5. This is kilobytes we are talking about here, not megabytes.)Getting a foreign SIM card for your phone will be the least expensive option for you. But there are a couple of drawbacks. First, you have to take time out of your travels to go to a store to buy the SIM card. You'll also have to get a local Spanish phone number, which means that calls to your U. S. This means that you will have to give out your local Spanish number. And since these SIM cards and phone numbers only last for one year, it's unlikely you'll be able to reuse the same SIM and number when you return to MWC next year. The way local prepaid SIM cards work is that instead of using your regular wireless service, you will pop out your existing SIM card and put in a new prepaid SIM card from a local Spanish carrier. The SIM card basically changes your service from your U. S. This is why you will have a new local phone number in Spain. The other thing to consider is that using a SIM card from a local carrier only works if you have an unlocked GSM . Free download of our eBook '101. The ultimate guide on how to unlock. BEFORE travelling overseas if you are planning to use a roaming SIM card or. Get the latest mobile broadband modem on a great Vodafone data plan. International roaming; Calling overseas; Prepaid. Most phones from AT& T and T- Mobile USA fit this category. But if you have the i. Phone and AT& T is your carrier, AT& T will not unlock the device for you to use it overseas. That said, you can get AT& T to unlock other smartphones for you. And T- Mobile also unlocks phones used on its network. Of course, this doesn't mean that an AT& T i. Phone can't be unlocked. But AT& T won't help you do it, so you'll have to do it on your own. If you are a Verizon Wireless or Sprint Nextel customer, you need to be sure that the phone you plan to use in Spain is a . Verizon and Sprint use a technology called CDMA. But European carriers, including those in Spain, use GSM technology. To serve customers who want to take their phones abroad, Sprint and Verizon offer some . These phones can roam onto foreign carrier networks or they can be unlocked and a local SIM card can be used. Verizon and Sprint will unlock any . Should you get a local SIM instead of roaming using your existing U. S.- based wireless service? It really depends on how long you will be in Spain or any other country you're visiting on your trip. And it depends on whether you want to go through the hassle of buying a new SIM and using a Spanish number while you're away. If you plan on using a lot of data or you will be gone for more than a couple of weeks, the local SIM option might be a better choice. But there are also ways to use a U. S. With that card, you have to add a minimum of 1. But you aren't charged an overage fee. This plan also includes 5. SMS messages per week, but it's restricted to messages sent to Spanish phones only. Incoming text messages are free. SMS text messages sent to a U. S. Under its international roaming plan, AT& T charges $5. MB of data for the month and an outrageous $2. MB of data. If you exceed that amount, AT& T charges $1. MB. But for some people, myself included, getting a local SIM card for a short trip is a hassle. Also my i. Phone service is with AT& T, and AT& T is the only U. S. So if I want to use my phone and if I don't want to unlock it myself, I have to roam. The best way to avoid outrageously expensive fees while abroad is to sign up for an international roaming plan with your carrier before you leave on your trip. Even though the plans are hefty in comparison to your regular monthly U. S. Go to the section for International roaming plans. In AT& T's case, you can sign up for an international roaming service for $5. This fee will not give you any free calling minutes, but it will reduce the per minute rate you will pay for calls. So instead of paying $1. Spain, it will cost you $1 per minute. While 4. 0 cents may not sound like a lot, if you plan to be chatting a lot, those minutes add up quickly and the $5. This way you can keep your voice minutes to a minimum and keep costs down. Next pick a messaging plan. AT& T offers several options here. You can get 5. 0 messages for $1. Check your history to see how many text messages you think you may need. Remember that these buckets of messages are for an entire month, but you will only be in Spain for one week. So consider how many messages you think you will send and receive in a week versus how many you might need monthly. If you go over your allotment it's between 1. Keep in mind that if you get a prepaid SIM, the text messages that come with your plan are messages sent to Spanish numbers only. So if you're going to be texting people with U. S. Again, keep in mind, that these messaging apps use data, so it's not entirely free either. As I mentioned before, international roaming for data is really expensive even when you buy a package from your U. S. This is where a prepaid option with a local carrier can be much more cost- effective. But if you are going to use a U. S. Keep in mind that when you use data while in a Wi- Fi mobile hot spot, you won't be eating up your allotted data from your carrier. In fact, I recommend making sure that the hotel you're staying in or the apartment you're renting has Wi- Fi for this purpose. Look at your data usage history to figure out which plan is the best fit for you. Remember you will only be in Spain for a week, so if you're a light user and you can leverage Wi- Fi as much as possible, you won't need the high- end plan. My advice is to go as low as you can in terms of a data package and use Wi- Fi wherever and whenever possible. If you don't want to use data roaming at all or if you want to make sure you aren't unknowingly using data when you aren't near Wi- Fi, you can turn off international data roaming on your smartphone. And when you need it, you can turn it back on. That choice will live somewhere in your Settings menu (on the i. Phone go to Settings > General > Network and deactivate . For the times when you're not near Wi- Fi, you can activate the setting, download what you need, and turn it off again. Another thing you can do is to turn off all push- notifications and automatic e- mail downloads. If you can use Wi- Fi and you are careful about your usage, you should be fine signing up for a minimal package. For example, I signed up for the $6 international voice roaming service, $3. MB of data. All told, I'm adding $6. One thing to keep in mind is that even though you only need the international roaming service for a week, you must keep the service until the end of your billing cycle. If you cancel the services before the end of the billing cycle, the cost will be prorated. This also means that the usage will be prorated. So if you signed up for 5. MB of data, you won't get the full 5. MB. You will mostly likely only get a quarter of that total. The other thing to remember is that you must cancel the service at the end of the billing cycle, or you will continue to get charged for the international roaming plans month after month. AT& T has a handy tool on its Web site that allows you to pick the activation and termination dates of the services when you change them in your account. And it marks the date when your billing cycle starts and ends to help you figure out when you should terminate service. I hope this advice was helpful. Have a great time in Barcelona! And if you see me wandering around the Fira or dashing into a keynote, be sure to say . And yes, I did cry a little (don't judge me!). Be patient and wait for the i. Phone 5 to come out. Most likely, you'll only have to wait until June or July. It's already nearly March, so that isn't too far off. Worst case scenario, you wait until September or October. If your i. Phone 3. GS is still holding up even after you dropped it, count your blessings. If I use the browser or too many Web- enabled apps in a row, the phone just poops out without warning, crashing into the black screen of death until I hook it up to a charger to bring it back to life. Believe me, I really want a new phone, too. But I am waiting for Apple's new i. Phone, because it just doesn't make sense to buy the i. Phone 4. S now when I am fairly certain that within the next few months a newer and better model will probably be available. Now, don't get me wrong.
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