Mobile Wiseguy

Archive for the ‘roaming’ Category
What will texting cost while overseas with at&t wireless phone
I am on the way to Trinidad and just got off the phone with at&t. The customer service representative argued with me about texting outside the country. The at&t representative said that it would cost to send and receive text when outside the country. I told him if you have a text package the incoming messages would come out of your package. He said this is what he does for a living and I should go to att.com to verify what he said.
This is how at&t wireless charges for texting overseas. If you have a text package your incoming text come out of the package. For example if you have unlimited texting you can receive unlimited incoming text while overseas, if you have the $5 200 text package you can get 200 free incoming text while overseas but if you go over your package the the cost is $.50 a text or $1.30 for a picture. Out going messages are always billed, see below for more details.
This was copied directly from att.com website.
Sending Text, Picture, and Video Messages When Outside the U.S.
Text Messages $0.50 per message sent
Picture and Video Messages $1.30 per message sent
Home pay-per-use or package rates apply to all text, picture, or video messages received when roaming internationally. See your Rate Plan Brochure for details.
Data usage pay-per-use rate is $.0195/KB, except in Canada where rate is $.015/KB.
To save on data usage when roaming internationally with your smartphone, iPhone, or laptop see att.com/worldpackages.
traveling overseas and want to use a sim card from that country
When traveling overseas one of the best ways to save money on roaming fees is to buy an unlocked GSM cell phone and use a prepaid sim card from that country that you are visiting. Prepaid cell phone service is sold everywhere overseas in the airport and almost every corner block. The calls are much less expensive and most of the time you have unlimited incoming calls. The last time I went to Trinidad I spent $30 for the sim card and my minutes for the two weeks I was over there. If I had used my regular phone roaming it would of cost me $2 a minute and with all the calls I made my bill would have been in the hundreds for the roaming cost. I unlocked my Blackberry Bold 9000 before I went and used a sim card from Bmobile a local wireless carrier.
An unlocked cell phone can use any sim card from any GSM wireless provider. One of the important things to look for in an unlocked cell phone is the GSM frequency. Some GSM cell phone have one or two frequencies like the Motorola F3. The Motorola F3 is 850/1900 a 2 band phone that would work on any GSM provider in the United States since the U.S. only use two GSM bands 850/1900 it would not be a problem. AT&T uses 850/1900 and T-Mobile uses 1900 GSM networks but countries like Europe and the rest of the world use sometimes the 900 or the 1800 GSM networks.
Now the best phone to have for roaming is the quad band GSM, which is used for global calls where GSM network coverage is present. The Motorola V3 Razr works on these GSM Networks: GSM 850, 900, GSM 1800 and GSM 1900. The Quad band GSM phone is always the best type of unlocked cell phone for traveling.
I am in Trinidad
I will be using my Blackberry for email, up loading video, watching videos and tweets. I am going to use wifi to avoid the high data charges from roaming.
I could have paid $25 for 20MB while roaming but I decided not too at the last minute.
I have done 12MB of data in 6 hours of being here all wifi from the Palms hotel in Trinidad.
Check out what I loaded at My Videos on QIK


