As vacation season is ramping up, people have been asking about how to make sure they don’t get smacked with outrageous phone bills upon their return from international vacations. Here are my tips for trips to Europe, mostly around ways you can take advantage of the phone’s settings to limit your exposure.
Please do check in with Apple and your phone company, though, to make sure there isn’t anything else you need to do: the last time I traveled abroad was two years ago so things may have changed. Note also that the options below were accurate for an iPhone 5 running iOS 6.0.1. Your phone may be slightly different.
- Call your phone carrier.
- Let them know where you are traveling and see whether you need to set up an international calling plan and an international data plan for that time period (and make sure to turn it off when you are back!). These plans themselves aren’t super cheap.
- Make sure you find out how much it costs to place and receive calls and texts under the plan, and how much each MB of data downloaded will cost you. Just because you have a plan doesn’t mean these things are free. Record that cost information somewhere you’ll have handy while traveling, like in the notes app on your phone.
- Learn how to turn off select phone features and monitor your usage.
- Turn your cellular data service on and off. When I travel abroad, I generally keep my cell data service off. This means the phone receives/sends data and text messages through wifi only, which is free (unless the wifi provider is charging you separately, which you’d know about). The risk you run if you leave cell service on is that you’ll go around doing your normal things on your phone and not realize how much stuff is going through that cellular connection and how much it’ll cost you until it’s way too late — and you don’t get any warnings. If you’re keeping it off, though, you won’t receive texts or be able to get internet data or voicemails unless you’re hooked up to wifi. I turn the service back on if I’m not near wifi and need to get specific data, or a few times a day if I’ve been away from wifi and want to check if I have any text messages, or if I’m meeting up with people and need to be able to receive texts. Note that this setting does not affect actual phone service — incoming or outgoing calls — at all. More information about what you can and can’t do with your cellular service off is here. To turn your cellular service on and off:
- Go to Settings
- Tap General
- Tap Cellular
- Use the Cellular Data toggle to turn the service on and off
- Monitor usage. Keep an eye on how much data you’ve used as you travel, and use the notes you took about costs to calculate your current expenditures. As you are leaving (this is a good airport gate activity), reset your usage meter:
- Go to Settings
- Tap General
- Tap Usage
- Go to the bottom and tap Cellular Usage
- Tap Reset Statistics
Then, while you are traveling, you can check how much time you’ve spent on the phone and how much cell data you’ve used.
- Go to Settings
- Tap General
- Tap Usage
- Go to the bottom and tap Cellular Usage
- Look at Call Time > Current Period and Cellular Network Data > Sent and > Received.
By keeping an eye on these numbers, you can get a sense of what activities use the most data and how to budget your connectivity time.
- Airplane mode. Remember you can always turn off all cell and data and wifi services using airplane mode — it’s the first option under Settings.
- Turn your cellular data service on and off. When I travel abroad, I generally keep my cell data service off. This means the phone receives/sends data and text messages through wifi only, which is free (unless the wifi provider is charging you separately, which you’d know about). The risk you run if you leave cell service on is that you’ll go around doing your normal things on your phone and not realize how much stuff is going through that cellular connection and how much it’ll cost you until it’s way too late — and you don’t get any warnings. If you’re keeping it off, though, you won’t receive texts or be able to get internet data or voicemails unless you’re hooked up to wifi. I turn the service back on if I’m not near wifi and need to get specific data, or a few times a day if I’ve been away from wifi and want to check if I have any text messages, or if I’m meeting up with people and need to be able to receive texts. Note that this setting does not affect actual phone service — incoming or outgoing calls — at all. More information about what you can and can’t do with your cellular service off is here. To turn your cellular service on and off:
One thing I don’t have a lot of experience with is how GPS usage is affected by these settings; you can’t access maps without some data but GPS itself does still work to some degree, I believe. Leave a note in the comments if you know!
Leave a Comment