If you travel a lot internationally you most likely wouldn’t dream of leaving your smartphone behind. It is a convenient tool as you can quickly get directions in a foreign city, or alter 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 getting data, it can cost you up to $15 for every megabyte of data you receive. There are certain things you can do to avoid 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. In addition to 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 what about making calls. You could download Skype or Google Voice so you can make calls, it is less costly than the alternatives.
International SIM Cards
If your cell phone company allows you to use other providers, you could always buy a SIM card. The Frugal Traveler tried two out, Telestial’s Passport card which costs $19 and OneSimCard’s Standard card costing $30. They reported that both of these work effectively and give you a main phone number that is not from your home country.
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