Ask Slashdot: Best Smartphone Plan For a US Vacation? 200
SJrX writes "I am planning on visiting the Pacific Northwest for several weeks, and was looking for the best smartphone option available. Roaming data rates and SMS rates are ridiculously high (best plans are $0.80 / MB, and $0.75 / message). Beyond AT&T and Verizon Prepaid, are there any other options? (I'm on an iPhone 4 so GSM is a must.) I assume in the US, I have no credit history for which to qualify for a plan, and a contract is obviously out of the question. Data and SMS are the only important things, with a few hundred minutes being plenty. I'm only planning on being in the US for 2 or 3 weeks, but mainly in rural areas (US Route 101) so large (3G) coverage is important."
AT&T (Score:2)
Hello,
Normally, I would recommend Simple Mobile [mysimplemobile.com] which is contract-free using the T-Mobile network. $60 will get you unlimited everything. Since you have an iPhone though, and 3G is a must, you are probably stuck using AT&T's 3G network. That probably means getting a SIM card [att.com] and then paying $75/mo for a whopping 200MB on the Pay as you Go plan. But hey, at least you will get 4G.
Welcome to America.
It's not a must (Score:3, Insightful)
Leave your iPhone behind and buy a local prepaid.
Re:It's not a must (Score:4, Informative)
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This. Border guards have a hardon for smartphones. Leave your laptop behind too. What I'm trying to figure out is why anyone in their right mind would cross our border willingly, for a vacation no less.
There are some things in the U.S. and Canada I'd have like to have seen (and photographed!) before I died. Niagra falls, The Grand Canyon, Yosemite, The Canadian Rockies. But I am very much put off by the idea of being finger-printed and possibly having some TSA agent's bad day turn into my bad lifetime or having my things seized and not returned. And now that I have a family it's not just me that I have to think of. I can imagine entering into some twilight reality where my 3 year old talking back to a TSA
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Depending where you're coming from it can be highly likely that your flight to Canada will involve a connection through the US - in which case, yep, you're getting fingerprinted and anything else they want to do with you.
(Yes, with enough effort / expense one can certainly get flights that enter direct ... I just want to point out that the US system is perverse enough to capture even people who are just transiting through and treat them like criminals too.)
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You could book a different route... depending on the time of year, you may even want to do this... it'll be a longer flight, but probably worth it in the end. You can, for example, fly Australia to Vancouver via Tokyo without ever crossing US airspace. It's even easier, though a much longer flight, to fly Australia to Canada via Europe, but in that case I would suggest that you plan for a week to decompress in Europe either way of the trip.
That said, the Rockies are nice but I prefer the Alps, and Niagara i
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I'm in Australia. Every time I fly to Canada, I cross US air space, so I'm forced to undergo a US groping, fingerprints, retina scan etc. just to enter Canada.
Once we were made to exit the plane, immigrate to the US, go round the corner (queue up) and depart again because our plane made a stopover in Hawaii on the way to Vancouver. Nobody remembers the term 'In Transit' any more?
You might have to dig a bit, but there's a trend towards avoiding the US entirely [wikitravel.org] while flying, for those of us who don't see the need to be groped by the country we didn't want to visit in the first place.
My last trip to the US was about five years ago (we arrived the night before The Bathroom Chemistry Incident), and while there are some reasons I'd like to travel there again in the future, none of them warrant the expected treatment we would endure (much less what *might* happen if we're unlucky and get
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A lot of us see Homeland Stupidity, er, Homeland Security Theater for what is is: an opportunity to get rich on the backs of taxpayers, and gain power in the process with little to nothing in return. Some of us prefer to go with Israeli-style security which actually works (you know, actually TALK to people and observe their reactions, and apply this scientific principle called PROFILING) which would preserve our freedoms.
However, many more of us have been
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Plan to put down your smartphone (Score:2)
You did say vacation, right?
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Plan to put down your smartphone. You did say vacation, right?
Yes, all the more reason to bring a smart phone along. Try thinking about how phone+GPS+Internet would be useful while traveling. I bet you're creative enough to find at least one good reason why it could be worthwhile.
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Good Luck! (Score:4)
If you insist on GSM, that means AT&T or T-Mobile. If you want rural coverage of 3G, that pretty much leaves out T-Mobile.
So...AT&T it is. (I'd say "We have a winner!", but I'd be lying.)
Buy a pre-paid SIM and be done with it. The smartphone plan is like $2 / day on days used for unlimited talk and text. 3 Gb of data for a month will run you $35. The SIM itself should be free.
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If you insist on GSM, that means AT&T or T-Mobile. If you want rural coverage of 3G, that pretty much leaves out T-Mobile.
I live in the Pacific Northwest, and was a T-Mobile customer until recently. I liked their company, but their rural coverage - even phone coverage - is terrible. IIRC they still have some sort of cross-network roaming agreement with AT&T, but you have to have a phone that can handle those frequencies (I guess an iPhone qualifies).
But what's really odd is - T-Mobile's data rates have been higher than AT&T's, despite the lousy network!
Having said all that... I'm not sure how AT&T's 3G coverage is
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> Does this happen in the USA too?
yes, if you don't use it for 3 months (usually), they even cancel your credit (= eat the money you had already paid). This is waived if you have spent more than $100 (at least with T-Mobile, maybe the others are different)
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The T-Mobile "Pay as you Go" option is good for 12 months after each time you fill up your account with credit.
So if you visit the US at least once per year and fill up your account, your number will continue to work.
http://www.t-mobile.com/shop/plans/prepaid-plans.aspx
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The T-Mobile "Pay as you Go" option is good for 12 months after each time you fill up your account with credit.
If you buy $100 worth of time. And if AT&T hasn't swallowed up T-Mobile by the time you come again.
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And if AT&T hasn't swallowed up T-Mobile by the time you come again.
Very true.
It will be a dark time of control by monopolies.
All praise the "free market" economy.
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I think these days you need a valid US mailing address and credit card to activate even the pre-paid devices. And the cost for pre-paid data is $5 for 10 MB, $15 for 100 MB, $25 for 500 MB.
We had this experience when visiting the US as while back. For whatever reason we couldn't buy prepaid cards with European credit cards. Ironically we were told that we could buy a US prepaid credit card and use that to pay the prepaid SIM... Argh. Can't remember if we just gave up at that point.
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I thought you'd suggest a prepay plan like Boost, Virgin Mobile, TracFone, Net10, or others.
You can get a prepaid GSM phone from a third party carrier. I would recommend sticking with GSM and making sure you get a quad band phone. This way you can get rural local carriers like Prairie Wireless on the 800Mhzish band in states like New Mexico, and have the added bonus of being able to use the phone at home.
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You get Edge (if you're lucky) and you will like it!
Have you considered leaving your phone at home and going on a real vacation [imdb.com]?
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The European one uses the T-mobile freq. Only At&T puts GSM on that stretch of spectrum.
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T-mobile pay as you go (Score:3)
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I concur. Just back from a 2 week trip to San Francisco from Canada, and my Canadian Bell (unlocked; rooted) Galaxy S connected on EDGE speeds for pretty much the whole time (darn mountain ranges...).It was supposed to be only 2Gig of data, but I got an SMS mid way through the trip that informed me that my plan was updated to unlimited data. It was the "Prepaid Unlimited Talk, Text, 2GB data plan" for $70. We got 2 SIMS with this plan (a T-Mobile G1 on HSPA fast speed, and my Canadian Bell Galaxy S maxing o
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Re:T-mobile pay as you go (Score:4)
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I like the Pay by the Month plans because I decided to buy my phone and I get a discount.
The only problem with the T-Mobile plan is that he wants roaming 3G on an iPhone and the iPhone will only be edge on T-Mobile.
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If GSM only... (Score:5, Informative)
...then you can throw out Verizon, they are CDMA.
Of the majors, that leaves you with AT&T or T-Mobile. There are a lot of smaller GSM carriers, but many of them are regional and/or will end up roaming in areas they don't have coverage, so I'm not sure if it's worth looking to hard at them.
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Will the iPhone 4 do 3G on T-mobile? I don't think it does.
So AT&T is then the only option. There, that makes things easy.
Buy a go-phone SIM at an AT&T store, and you can pay $25 for 500GB of data. Calls (in the US) are10 cents per minute.
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That should, of course, say 500MB not GB!
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A iPhone from over seas may as they use different frequencies for 3G... it's the reason some people who flash a European modem on a Galaxy S loose 3G on AT&T here in the states.
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Will the iPhone 4 do 3G on T-mobile? I don't think it does.
ATT has a monopoly on the 3G frequencies in the US.
But the iPhone will connect via T-Mobile's EDGE frequencies just fine.
May T-Mobile stores also have a SIM cutter for the iPhone 4 micro sim slot.
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T-Mobile has 3G too; in fact, they use the same frequencies as overseas, IIRC. The US GSM iPhone won't get 3G, but a foreign one should get in, in theory.
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in theory.
In reality, all GSM iPhones have the same frequency support.
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No. GSM just specifies the protocol and security stacks, it does not specify the frequencies. As such, GSM supports a number of different frequencies bands and it's up the phone manufacture on how many of those bands are actually implemented in the phone. Most phones nowadays are quad-band so they can roam, but you can implement a perfectly fine GSM phone that only connects to one band or two bands
You will sometimes see phones implement just the domainant ones in your area (850MHz/1900MHz for North Ameri
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No. GSM just specifies the protocol and security stacks, it does not specify the frequencies.
And Apple makes ONE GSM based iPhone sold globally.
The only difference being the ones locked for non-free corporate controlled countries.
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You have it backwards. ATT uses 'standard' 3G frequencies (i.e. frequencies that are used by at least some other countries/providers). T-Mobile is the weird one, using the 1700 Mhz UMTS band that I don't think is used by any other provider on earth. Virtually no 3GSM/UMTS/HSDPA phones support this band, other than ones specifically manufactured for, and sold by, T-Mobile USA.
The iPhone 4 will work fine on ATT (after all, ATT is ~the~ GSM iPhone carrier in the US). However, their prepaid options are ... expe
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Verizon also doesn't have data service north of Seattle. I just got back from a trip to Vancouver and Alaska, and it is all "extended network" which means voice-only even though you're in-network with a US-and-Canadia plan.
TAKE YOUR VACATION! (Score:3)
HWY 101 rocks, don't ruin it w/ a damn phone!
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HWY 101 rocks, don't ruin it w/ a damn phone!
Why not, everyone else does.
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/cry
It's true...
O.K. so there may be some caveat's... Truth be told, I use data on my phone to pump Pandora through my car stereo, but out there, it's pretty choppy, so I usually switch to something else.
Even Verizon doesn't cover the whole 101 stretch though, there are many parts in WA & OR that don't get 3G coverage, so data will be slower than snail mail. Between Forks and Ocean Shores for sure.
Really, if you're responding a few quick texts... fine, but if an "emergency" happened, what could you RE
Try to find a local carrier (Score:2, Interesting)
Try to find a local carrier in the area. You may be able to find US Cellular, Metro PCS, or something along those lines.
The reason I recommend looking into them is with a lot of those companies you'll get better coverage if they are a local provider as they'll have their own towers in the area (much the same way Immix Wireless does in central and eastern PA). Plus, with a lot of them (just like with AT&T and Verizon) you can get either a pre-paid plan or sign up for a plan without contract since you'll
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I have AT&T and I can roam on Immix's junk network. Thank god I don't live in the area anymore, and my hometown is now covered by native AT&T 3G.
When I roam on Immix, data rarely functions faster than 56k or so, and I'm lucky to get calls. Texts usually come through with a 2-3 hour delay.
They're junk and they've been junk since they were Conestoga Wireless.
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Sorry, forgot that yes US Cellular and Metro are CDMA (but I have to say I never mentioned Cricket as that I did remember off of the top of my head.. I listed Immix instead as an example which is GSM)
But there are others (though some may now be acquired or closed up.. no clue) including GCI Wireless, Westlink, and others. The other issue is some of them just have towers they rent to the bigger carriers and get $$ that way, as in not all actually have their own subscribers so it's hard to say :)
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On the other hand, here [mobileworldlive.com] is a list of GSM networks in the US. I can't speak for the quality of them, but here it is nonetheless.
Cricket (Score:3)
I used Cricket for several years and they were probably the least-hassle mobile phone company I ever dealt with. The only reason I switched away from them is that I needed data and at the time (this was about 5 years ago or so) they didn't have it.
Check them out.
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Cricket's coverage map shows coverage, but I can't sign up with them in Minnesota (for example) because their coverage here is provided by a roaming partner.
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Er...
They are CDMA/EVDO, not GSM. That rules them out for anyone bringing a phone from outside the US, where CDMA is unheard of.*
(* Yes I know there are ~some~ CDMA networks outside of the US ... Korea and China spring to mind ... but the vast majority of the world is GSM/UMTS/HSDPA-only).
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Uhm... (Score:2)
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Don't bother planning ahead (Score:2)
Just show up and see what the locals are doing. Do that. They'll have already figured out which carrier works best where you are.
Ovi maps preloaded will save money - get the N8 (Score:2)
The N8's prime advantages on holiday are:
Preloaded maps so you don't need to eat up bandwidth to look up how to get places.
A 12MP camera that justifies the megapixel numbr by being fantastic and better if you get the panorama app.
Longer battery life than most of them and certainly longer than a lot of cameras.
Pentaband Radio - if it's GSM you can connect.
Built like a brick shithouse. Sorry, that saying might be local to where I'm from but basically it's tough.
The HDMI output is very nice for looking at ph
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If this is ok for you then the maps should be ok too:
http://maps.ovi.com/# [ovi.com]|47.7023446|-122.2419395|11|0|0|hybrid.day?
It doesn't seem too bad to me. It's not great in Argentina or my part of Africa. It's also quite a lot better than not having a map at all because you've run out of credit or can't get a signal.
Regards,
Tim
walmart (Score:4, Funny)
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I'm actually planning on this. I'm also taking a "vacation" to the states, where the only way I could get away for 3 weeks was to be tied to a cellphone.
Apparently Tracfones are ludicrously cheap ($10) and call call anywhere in the US at 20 cents/min. I'm planning on tying this to a VoIP line, so I can use the cell to call outside the US for only another couple cents per minute.
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Virgin Mobile's got phones for $15-$20 and ludicrously cheap plans: $30 gets 1500 minutes, $60 gets unlimited everything.
FlyerTalk.com (Score:2)
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/travel-technology-169/ [flyertalk.com]
Start with the "stickies."
T-Mobile (Score:2)
They have unlimited data, unlimited SMS and a fairly reasonable number of minutes. And the price isn't so bad either.
The coverage could use a little work, but it's pretty good in cities and on the freeways between them.
I will be quite unhappy if they are swallowed by AT&T. They are the least bad of all the cell phone operators.
www.prepaidgsm.net (Score:2)
It's really a great site.
My personal choice is always to put a prepaid GSM card with some cheap data plan into my primary smart phone and then use an older phone with my home country SIM to receive calls or make calls where my caller id is important. Others work around that by forwarding calls and using special services like skype's caller id function.
Coverage (Score:2)
I've been up and down the entire length 101 from Silicon Valley to the Washington/Oregon border about a half dozen times in the last three years. If you like driving and scenery, this is a good place to go (get some ice cream from the Tillamook Creamery Assn if you pass through). And bring a real camera (don't be that guy standing by the road taking pictures of the sunset with your iPhone). I can't advise on pricing, but i can tell you about coverage. My AT&T iPhone
Surprised no one mentioned ekit (Score:3)
http://ekit.com/ekit/home/ [ekit.com]
I used them for a trip to europe, prices were half of what my local carrier wanted for European roaming. It included data. I have an iPhone 3GS but I had to unlock it to use the sim card.
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$15/MB (count them, ONE MB) ?!
Please see prices above, we're talking in the range of 500 MB for $25.
Wow! In which case, Telestial's [telestial.com] $1/MB prepaid data rate looks better than I thought...but it's still no mega data plan.
Best option...bring a netbook and just hang out at Starbucks when you want to update your FB photo albums...or do it at night in your hotel room.
AT&T prepaid sim + unlock iphone (Score:2)
I visited the USA for 4 weeks in November. I got my iphone unlocked by my carrier (telstra), flew to the USA, walked into an AT&T store, handed over $50-70 or so, and walked out with a prepaid SIM with a ton of credit and either 250 or 500mb of data (I don't remember).
The only trick is that you need to manually set the APN on the iphone for data to work, but you can do this without jailbreaking if you can get a wifi connection for ~5 minutes.
Coverage wasn't bad, and I didn't use most of my credit apart
International billing can be difficult (Score:2)
Red Pocket (Score:2)
Same question for three weeks in Iceland.... (Score:2)
Same question for three weeks in Iceland....
My suggestion (Score:2)
Get one that has good roaming rates in Cuba.
Telestial...but not for data (Score:2)
Telestial [telestial.com] is the international prepaid phone/plan we used for our recent trip to Oz and NZ, and it was incredible value...but we only used it for voice calls, not data. For teh internets, a netbook served us well, along with a little pre-planning between hotspots.
The nice thing about the Telestial phone is that if you (or your family) plan to travel to many countries, you can generally get an incredible per-minute rate both in the country you're traveling through and for long distance calls back home, all
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Assuming they will be making mostly international calls, these won't be included in the 'unlimited' bundle. T-Mobile won't offer them 3G service on their iPhone which was a requirement, and AT&T will offer 500MB of data for $25.
Why exactly is t-mobile a better choice?
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Why exactly is t-mobile a better choice?
Because they are cheaper than ATT and if you go with the "Pay as you Go" option, you aren't signing up for anything monthly.
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Nor are you signing up for anything monthly with an AT&T go-phone. So, T-mobile is more expensive, with poorer coverage and probably no 3G.
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I think his point was that T-Mobile uses the non-standard AWS band for 3G data. So sure, you can subscribe to T-Mobile's data plan, you still aren't getting any data on a standard international GSM phone (except for edge, which is actually good enough for minimal purposes - keeping your maps working, etc.)
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A T-Mobile prepay "Pay as you Go" SIM isn't expensive...
Unless you are a chatter box and use a ton of minutes.
http://www.t-mobile.com/shop/plans/prepaid-plans.aspx
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If you give up on using data, a European phone will work on ATT's network as a GSM phone. As long as it's a quad-band phone you're fine. Their pay-as-you-go option is $2/day for unlimited nationwide long distance, local talk, and nationwide texting, and you only get billed on days you use it. Obscenely expensive by European standards, but fairly reasonable by NA standards.
But there are better options out there. Depending on the length of the trip, you may want to get a monthly plan, or look into other provi
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They ride on T-Mobiles service.
Or you just just get a T-Mobile "pay as you go" account with no monthly cost.
http://www.t-mobile.com/shop/plans/prepaid-plans.aspx
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Or you just just get a T-Mobile "pay as you go" account with no monthly cost.
http://www.t-mobile.com/shop/plans/prepaid-plans.aspx
The my-simple-mobile service is far lower cost and is only by the month without any contract.
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And if where you work requires it, this isnt an option.
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If where you work requires you to be on duty during your vacation, it's time to think about a change of careers.
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That's easy for you to say. You don't know the details of the compensation package you get from said job that requires you to be available 24/7 in emergencies.
But then again, if you are happy with flipping burgers for a living, by all means, have your untethered vacations.
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Obviously work isn't requiring it. Because if they did, it would be an Ask Slashdot now will it?
If work wants me to carry a smartphone, they're not only paying for it, but if they require me to keep it with me on vacation, they're paying roaming. I don't care they're paying $2/minute for roaming or sending me 200kB emails (at $0.05/kB, that's $10) - it's their responsibility.
If the company doesn't want to pay roaming, they either get me a SIM already, o
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Sorry but I take my smartphone with me on holidays ~because I enjoy it~. Work doesn't call me. But I sure do like to be able to get emails from my family, search for nearby restaurants in foreign countries, check directions using GPS while driving on unfamiliar streets, play games on it to pass the time while sitting on planes or trains, etc etc. Not all of us use a smartphone exclusively for work.
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That's the right answer. I was only suggesting that for most of us, used to ubiquitous connectivity, that a few weeks off the grid is a very exotic and rewarding experience. I tried it a while back and it changed the way I think about being connected and about technology generally. I suggested it as something of a challenge.
It's like the story of the lumberjack who took his vacation in the woods. He died young, as lumberjacks tend.
Fi
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Why do you need clothes for a 2 week holiday? Surely you can reduce your time in public to keep your exposure down and spend 2 weeks enjoying your vacation rather than having your arms stuck in your clothes.
Or any other ridiculous variation. We all have different preferences and desires -- why are you trying to force yours on others?
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I think that is what he is expecting - a plan that is best described as "total stitch-up".
"Roaming" is the telecoms industry's jargon for "ripping you off". ,b>Just say no!
Anyway, have you tried talking to a UK carrier? It involves paying $2 a minute to talk to a badly paid parrot called Philip in Pakistan, and is extremely unlikely to reveal anything resembling a fact. Furthermore, since they are forbidden to use the word "no", or any phase that has a negative c
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You can definitely get a prepaid account without a contract.
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The nice thing is that these days "get a cheap phone" can mean a full featured Android smart phone for ~$120 which will give you the full smart phone experience while being cheap enough that if you lose it you can just write it off. (you might think that is a lot, but in the context of a whole trip and considering how much benefit it can be ... I think it's worth it).
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