International travel Phone and Data - experiences and advice please!

In My Humble Opinion
1

Later this year my partner and I are travelling to Europe (9 countries) for nearly 2 months, with a stopover in NY for 10 days on the way home.

We both have unlocked iPhones using different network providers (Telstra and Optus), I have an iPad Air with no SIM slot, and she has a Mac laptop.

There are so many options and it’s utterly unclear what is best, and not too outrageously priced. It looks like you generally want different solutions for phone and data.

Phone:
Telstra have roaming packs for $300 per 30 days, which include 1.5gb of data. As I’m already with Telstra I assume this means I get to keep my current number.

Optus don’t seem to have packs like that, you just pay roaming charges.

Vodaphone is cheap at $5 per day but obviously means a different number.

I presume there is some way of forwarding our current numbers to any new SIM we put in? That would be done by our current network providers? Its important we can still receive calls on our existing numbers, as that’s the contact that all the hotels and car rental places have for us.
Data:
Cheapest looks to be Gigsky, but that means replacing our current phone SIMs with theirs, which are data only, so we could only use Skype to make calls (or be swapping SIMs in and out all the time!). And we’d have to pick a data amount for each country we’re going to,

The Apple version of Gigsky only works in the iPad Air 2 or a mini iPad. I wouldn’t mind updating to the Air 2 anyway, and that would mean our phones would be free to choose a phone-only solution. We could presumably tether our phones to the Air 2 to share its data quota if needed. But that still means making calls via Skype, or standard roaming charges.

Or we could pick up new SIMs as we travel, but as we are constantly entering and leaving countries it sounds like a real pain.

Any help from folks in a similar situation much appreciated!

2

Look into T Mobile. They have a package with free international data, and I think international calls are $0.10/minute when you are abroad. The international data is throttled, and you always have an option to buy a local upgrade package. I use it for business, never buy the local upgrade, and have never had a problem with bandwidth to do my email and light surfing. Anyhoo, check into their deal.

Note: works great in Asia but I have no idea on Europe. I have in a 3 hour period, downloaded email in Taiwan, hong Kong and China and worked seamlessly across all 3 countries.

3

I can’t speak for Europe, but some observations based on our travels in Asia -

  1. Be care of operator restrictions. What normally happens here is that you can buy a “package” but it will only be relevant to your home network “partner” in the foreign country (here we have three main telcos, in Malaysia where most people get caught out there is also three or four - but your data package will only apply to ONE of them) - so be careful of your phone settings
  2. Only 1.5 GB of data? If you’re not careful, that can be used up surprisingly fast - escpecially if you are researching atttractions
  3. My wife and I will generally use a lot of tethering rather than buying two packages - but we haven’t had much fun trying to mix n match rotten fruit and robots
  4. We normally buy a “local” SIM n data package, and then look for free wifi spots to supplement this
  5. We find that android is much more friendly for swapping out sims that Apple - and we keep an older android phone specifically for this purpose
4

I travel in Europe (from the U.K.) modestly frequently - I’m just back from Holland and Belgium - and my advice is don’t use mobile data. Hotels, restaurants, and bars usually have wifi. Do your research in the hotel or cafe, not when you’re out on the road. In fact you should positively switch off mobile data unless you want a horrendous bill.

Two gotchas: tethering is often specifically prohibited in the terms & conditions, and local SIMs may require payment be made with a local credit or debit card.

5

  1. Don’t get mobile data. Use it only in an emergency.

  2. Buy a Kindle and/or use the kindle apps and download all of your travel guides ahead of time. Hotels usually have copies left by previous tourists as well.

  3. maps.me app. It’s free! Cannot recommend this highly enough. Download maps + driving instructions for each country on a per country basis and only uses phone’s GPS function. Driving directions were spot on- and rerouted immediately if a turn was missed. But most importantly, it was amazingly battery efficient!

  4. I just did 4 countries in 4 weeks and never considered turning on the cellular data. Texting and phone number still work just fine.

6

Thanks all - we will need and be using mobile data, we’re just looking for the cheapest and best way of getting it, after my $2,000+ bill while visiting Germany, Denmark and Sweden last year … !

It turns out Optus have a travel pack that’s virtually identical to Telstra’s (just well hidden on their website). Both of those cover all calls local and international, so that looks good.

T Mobile seems to be American, so no good for us.

Will avoid local SIMs; I was wary of them anyway since we’re in so many different countries.

maps.me looks brilliant, thanks for that pointer. Will load that on phone and iPad before we go.

What I’m thinking of doing is updating my iPad Air to an Air 2 with SIM, and then getting a data-only plan for that, from someone liker GlobalGig - from them I can get 3gb for $50 a month (5gb for $70) that covers every country I’m going to.