Comments on: Note to self, you: Do not roam internationally on AT&T – UPDATE: AT&T responds

By: CA Joe Consumer

CA Joe Consumer — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 18:51:34 +0000

Carriers pay one another between $0.50 and $3.50 per MB for data roaming according to this NYT article: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/04/business/worldbusiness/04regulate.html I am certain that the carrier to carrier costs have gone down further.

Using this as a rough benchmark, one can decide what is reasonable, fair, and ethical and negotiate with their carrier to mark down excessive fees.

If you hit a wall, you might also consider: writing Apple and AT&T execs, contacting government agencies, filing a small claims complaint, and promoting your fight.

Data roaming fees are fees that carriers impose because they are able to get away them a significant percentage of the time. A reasonably vigorous should generally lead the carrier to cave.

Good luck!

By: Don't roam internationally on AT&T - BigWideLogic.com

Don't roam internationally on AT&T - BigWideLogic.com — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 14:51:28 +0000

[...] I’m not a vindictive man. I believe in sweetness and light. But I would encourage anyone with a brain who travels, especially in these trying economic times, to buy an unlocked GSM phone and purchase pay as you go SIM cards or a MaxRoam SIM and a Rebel SIMCard for the iPhone 3G. I also encourage you to use Boingo for Wi-Fi roaming in airports and, increasingly, cities. Why? Because I just paid the equivalent to a flight to Paris and back just because I wanted to use Google Maps on the iPhone 3G to find my way around gay Pareee.Note that I understood the costs involved in roaming, but I think it’s worth a post to warn business travellers of potential pitfalls and to call out a few good services I’ve used over the year (MaxRoam, Boingo) but, for various reasons, weren’t able to help me on this trip. Read more… [...]

By: Richard Morales

Richard Morales — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 04:13:39 +0000

I didn’t read that offensive at all… but what do I know.

Now if he said his bullshit overcharged AT&T bill was gay, using the term as a negative, that might come off a bit offensive. But even in that situation it just makes the user of such obscenities seem like an uneducated douche more than anything else.

- Gay guy in Los Angeles…

who would want to go to hetero-paree anyway :P

By: Removing ATT International Data Plan | Rendition X

Removing ATT International Data Plan | Rendition X — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 17:00:42 +0000

[...] out of the country so we added the international data plan to our our iPhone accounts with ATT (thank you TechCrunch for the tip). All went well until I tried to deactivate the service two weeks later. ATT said that I had to [...]

By: Justin Leach » Daily Tech: Japan Sells More Than 500,000 Nintendo DSis

Justin Leach » Daily Tech: Japan Sells More Than 500,000 Nintendo DSis — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 21:04:38 +0000

[...] iPhone owners. If you plan on traveling internationally this holiday season, make sure to turn your data roaming button off. — [...]

By: jacksonwhole

jacksonwhole — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 20:05:03 +0000

Wow, I guess you really were MIA the first month the iPhone came out. This is really OLD news and if you were not prepared for a bill approaching $1000, I question your intelligence.

By: kab

kab — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 22:54:23 +0000

International roaming sucks – always expensive.

Never heard of “Gay Paris?” I’m surprised that international roaming would even effect you.

By: Matt

Matt — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 22:04:36 +0000

My recipe:

1) Buy a prepaid sim card with about 5 Euros on it.

2) set up a Raketu account (raketu.com)

3) send SMS to initiate an inbound call to your phone. Inbound calls are free in France and in many other parts of Europe.

The 5 Euros will last at least 6 weeks (there is typically an expiration date).

Raketu isn’t free but it’s way cheap and I found it to be quite reliable.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 20:00:12 +0000

The Call In Europe web site seems to imply that there are separate plans for UK, Germany, France and Italy. I’m really interested in folks that have actually used this service with their iPhone. Also if they have used it with the data plan on the iPhone (along with how they set this up).

By: chazzy jeff

chazzy jeff — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 18:57:03 +0000

I travel frequently to Europe and AsiaPac. My T-Mobile Blackberry has UMA and allows me to call through WiFi (which is everywhere)and use only my domestic minutes.
I scrapped AT&T as soon as I found out about T-Mobile’s UMA. My domestic US rates are considerably cheaper and my coverage is much, much better.

By: Marcus

Marcus — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 17:49:16 +0000

Ironically, its always the stupid people that push for more taxes.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 17:39:45 +0000

I purchased the 20 MB plan for my trip to Japan, along with the cheaper minutes for voice. We cut our trip short, only spent 4 days there. My bill for that month: $325. I didn’t use 20MB for the entire month. Very painful.

By: KA

KA — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 17:34:08 +0000

AT&T sucks! I was charged nearly 400 bucks for the calls and texting during my vacation in Canada, and I never received any warning about what it may cost me. What if my phone was stolen?!! I found that I am being charged ridiculously high fees only when I received my bill a 3 weeks later.

They also screwed me and many of my friends with that “cheap iPhone for everyone” promise. They never mentioned that promotion does not apply to people who already HAVE plan with AT&T. What a nice way to reward your loyal customers!!! So now I am stuck with my Blackberry, paying nearly 70 bucks a month, and I don’t even have Blackberry/Internet access (that would be additional 50 bucks), and using only SMS and voice services. I am definitely buyign my own iPhone, at least I will getting somethign for the money I pay.

And finally, their commercial about “no dropped calls”? I used to be a Sprint customer (well, they also suck, with their poor choice of good phones and non-international standards), and I NEVER had dropped calls and was able to make calls from my office building (Chelsea market, New York). Now I am with AT&T, I get dropped calls every week, and I don’t have a signal in my office building.

AT&T sucks, sucks, sucks! Do NOT switch to them, or if you do, do not fall for any of their promotions, like a discounted phone, they will tie you with a 2 year contract and then you will regret that.

By: John A

John A — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 17:04:46 +0000

I’ve had AT&T since 2000, and got the iPhone when it came out. I travel abroad a few times a year, often to Paris. I’d found out about AT&T’s ridiculous rates when I was in Paris and accidentally hit the Safari button on my iPhone. I immediately shut it down. That little millisecond of a mistake cost me $15 in bandwidth charges (literally 15 bucks on my bill).
That’s why I’ve always bought local phone cards, pay as you go, when I travel anywhere for an extended period of time, or if I travel to the same place repeatedly. I’ve used France’s Orange pay as you go for years, and it works well (just go to the local branch and it cost me 40 euros to set up a new acct, and they included a cheapo small phone that worked well (no camera, big deal)). I recently found out about Call in Europe via an LA Times blog entry. It’s a France-based phone SIM card, with pretty cheap calls from france to france and to the US (half the price of calls using Orange’s pay as you go), and decent prices for calls if you’re in Europe (not in france) calling to Europe or the US. You’d have to check out the details, but I’m very happy with it, and paying a lot less than I did when I had Orange. The phone call in Europe gives you is pretty bad, it’s a cheap Motorala that’s actually worse than the cheap phone Orange gave me (and the instruction book was in german). But otherwise, it’s great for anyone traveling often to europe and either calling the US or other european countries. If you’re traveling elsewhere or calling elsewhere, it could be very expensive.

By: Tim

Tim — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 16:13:51 +0000

Get over it — it’s a colloquialism. It’s “necessary” in the same way you might refer to the “Big Apple” or the “Windy City”.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 16:09:37 +0000

One vendor that I haven’t seen mentioned is Call In Europe (www.callineurope.com). The rates seem decent and the data rates are especially attractive. The only rub is you seem to be getting country specific SIM’s so travel in other parts of Europe are Euro roaming rates. Still if you are going to a country this looks interesting.

The only issue is you need an unlocked iPhone to use the SIM card. While I think one of the hardware Sim breakers cards (Turbo Sim type) can allow voice calls, the inability to set the APN prevents data unless you jailbreak your phone.

Do I understand this correctly? Or is there a subtly here that I should be aware of?

By: Alon

Alon — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 15:14:52 +0000

I hate paying ATT as any one, but I had the same incident and was hit with a $400 charge for spending a day in Nova Scotia.

But, ATT were nice and agreed that I will pay the $40 international roaming charges retroactively. And they dropped the charge.

Always try the Customer Service before you pay.

Alon Cohen
EVP Phone.com

By: Steve Traveler

Steve Traveler — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 13:49:31 +0000

I was fairly smart when I traveled last, and researched the insane roaming charges for iPhone etc., so I came up with a very simple solution in order to use Google, mapping, etc. over there: Get an iPod Touch.

Think about it: how often are you using the voice part of the phone anyway, versus the mapping, email and internet functions? How much did I pay for service? ZERO.

I used free Wifi wherever I went. Now I grant you, free Wifi in Berlin, believe it or not is not nearly as ubiquitous as it is in say, Seattle, but it is out there if you are patient and look hard enough.

I think once or twice I went to a cafe where I paid for Wifi by the hour, but even then we’re talking 1 euro per hour, not $30 to check Google. I have to say, in Berlin at least, there are base stations everywhere. In Zürich, not so much. But it is almost always in every hotel and hostel you encounter.

I should mention that in addition to the occasional unlocked base station there were tons of for-pay base stations in every airport, train station, mall, etc., but I was loathe to pay for service because I know that, just like in the good ole US of A there are scam operators who sign you up for a monthly plan, and then you’re paying a monthly charge from now until whenever you discover it on your bill 5 years later.

The gall of some of these operators was so great that the name of their base stations almost always had the word “Free” in it. That’s how you knew it wasn’t. Funny how the business world works, isn’t it?

By: brom

brom — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 12:14:54 +0000

Why not buy a local prepaid SIM when you’re abroad? That way you can use mobile internet for local prices.

Life is not that hard…

By: John Biggs

John Biggs — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 12:13:20 +0000

Yep, you’re right. I was flitting around Europe whipping out my phone and offering it to children so they could call their penpals in Botswana. I should have been more careful.