By David
As a cell phone user, you have likely heard of and probably even experienced roaming charges at some point in your life. However, if you have never been overseas with your phone, you may not be aware of overseas roaming charges which tend to be significantly higher (sometimes up to $5 a minute) than domestic roaming charges. Thankfully, there are a few ways to avoid these charges and potentially save a good deal of money.
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Do not make calls
While it may seem on the extreme end of the reaction scale, simply not using or not even taking you phone with you on a trip is the simplest way to avoid incurring overseas roaming charges. With these charges standing at $5 a minute or $1 per kilobyte of data (1 1,000 of a MB) or worse it is easy to see why this is a good option. If you are just not able to implement the other solutions or just do not want to take the chance of them not working, being out of touch for a couple weeks could be preferable to the often thousand dollar or more phone bills that could otherwise result. To make certain your phone is not using background data without your knowledge, be sure to keep it in airplane mode or remove the SIM card.
Use a local SIM card
One thing you could do, assuming your phone is unlocked, is to simply remove your SIM card and get a new local SIM card to use while you are overseas. Since you do not have to buy a new phone, there is no need to sign up for a contract of any sort, and you can even get a SIM for a prepaid plan so you will not have to cancel the plan when you leave the country. This will allow you to use all your phone’s features as usual without paying the exorbitantly high overseas roaming charges. Best of all, when you head home, just switch the SIMs and you are all set. You can even keep the foreign SIM as a memento or for a return trip or just toss it as a prepaid plan will typically eventually cancel itself.
Click here to compare low cost cell phone plans. Free phone with activation. All major carriers.
Take advantage of Wi-Fi calling
Most modern smartphones will allow you to do what is called Wi-Fi calling which will typically allow you to make calls and use data over a Wi-Fi signal instead of the network often free of charge. Even if it still uses plan minutes, all Wi-Fi hot spots that are connected to the internet are considered “in network” for the purposes of determining roaming charges, allowing you to use your phone as you normally would without incurring overseas roaming charges. If you are calling home, international rates may still apply, and sometimes the internet access will not be free to use, but these additional costs are going to be far less than the fees otherwise incurred.
Now that you are more familiar with overseas roaming charges and how to avoid them, you can take your phone abroad without too much impact on your wallet.
Click here to compare low cost cell phone plans. Free phone with activation. All major carriers.
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