Mobile phones — calling the United States when abroad

This post is really intended mostly for US residents who want to travel overseas, although some of the principles apply globally.

Some readers may feel cheated because they’ve been away and they come back home to find huge mobile phone bills waiting for them.  Most carriers have international calling plans that allow customers to phone home at a discounted rate, but it is still not exactly cheap.  For example, AT&T offers an international calling plan for an extra $5.00 per month.  Then you can use your cell phone abroad.   If you have that plan and you’re in England, you can then phone back to the United States for $0.20 per minute, which is not too bad, but you also have to pay that rate if you want to make a call to an English number.  Worse, when your English friends call you, they have to pay international charges because they are calling an American number.

My usual solution to this problem is to get a local “pay-as-you-go” plan in the country you are visiting.  I have done this in Spain, Italy, Greece, Thailand, and England, and it works quite well.  This is what you need to do.

1.  First make sure that your phone uses GSM technology.  This is the most popular standard for cellular phones internationally.  (In the United States, AT&T and T-Mobile use GSM, but Verizon doesn’t.)  If you are Verizon subscriber, you can usually get a quad band phone for a reasonable price on eBay.

2.  Make sure that your phone is a quad-band phone.  This basically means that it will work on pretty much all the frequencies that are used around the world.  (Dual band phones bought in the United States won’t work at all, and tri-band results are somewhat unpredictable.)

3.  Make sure that your phone is “unlocked.”  When you buy a phone in the United States, a phone company typically sells it to you for just a fraction of its real cost.  They recover the cost of the phone through your monthly charges, and they lock the phone to the carrier so that you can’t get a cheap phone and then switch to another carrier.  AT&T and T-Mobile are both willing to give you the unlock code and they tell you how to unlock the phone after you have paid your bill for a few months.  You can also buy unlocked phones on eBay.

4.  Go to a mobile phone shop in the country you are visiting, and ask for a SIM card.  This is the subscriber identity module, and it is a little chip that looks a bit like the SD cards used in cameras.  You can usually get one for a very low price or sometimes they are free, and this establishes your account with the local phone company, and it comes with a local mobile number.  You can then top up your account with money whenever it is running short.

I use O2, when I am in the UK.  My rates are 25 pence a minutes for the first three minutes on any a particular day and 3 pence a minute for the rest of the day.  I also have a “bolt on” that cost me a one-time charge of five pounds.  This allows me to call the United States on evenings and weekends for 10 pence a minute.  Text messaging is free and unlimited to UK numbers on this plan and 10 pence to send a text to the US.

There is a trend to move towards plans that have a monthly cost, but those are probably suitable only for the very frequent visitor or a person who is staying for a few moths.

A few tips:

1.  Remember that in most countries it is relatively expensive to call a mobile phone.  So, you can run up that large bill at home if your family calls you on your mobile.  It is better to call them.  You can always call back based on the caller ID.

2.  Don’t put too much money in the phone.  O-2 cancels accounts if they have not been used for six months.  (I sometimes make a short call from the United States to stop that from happening.)

3.  In many countries (Italy, Spain, and Thailand, for example), you need to have identification with you to get a SIM card.  Make sure you have your passport with you when you go shopping.

4.  Plans are frequently changing.  Go to the vendor and tell them what you want to do.  They will frequently give you good advice about the optimal plan.

5.  Most phones have dual voltage chargers.  Make sure that the charger can be used anywhere in the world.  It’s a real bore if you need to carry two of them.

6.  There is a good case for using the same phone as you usually use.  (I use a Blackberry.  It is convenient to have my address book on the phone, but I also don’t have to figure out how to use a different phone.)

7.  Calling from cruise ships can be painfully expensive.  My best advice is simply not to do it!  Also, if a ship is in or near a port, make sure that you are connected to the local phone company rather than the cruise ship’s connection.

8. “Pay as you go” plans are quite common in Europe, and you can usually top up your phone almost anywhere (banks, grocery stores, post offices, and so on).  Mine comes with a card.  You hand over the money and the vendor swipes the card.  You almost instantly get a text confirming that your payment has been credited to your account.

I’ll put more information in a future post about how I stay in touch while abroad at relatively low cost.