Using the phone abroad

[Anonymous]

For a short trip I am fine with paying the Verizon charge of $10/day (and I try not to think of this as paying twice for the same service).

For a recent longer trip (2 weeks), I bought an Airlo e-sim. It was inexpensive and covered our regular needs (maps, internet searches). However, I needed to switch to wifi to get/receive texts from my US number, although WhatsApp still worked with my US number on e-sim. We were on vacation so it was nice to not always be instantly available anyways. My kid hot-spotted off of the e-sim and could use her US number for texting.

[Anonymous]

One of the many reasons I am happy to have switched to T Mobile. Free international roaming/data. Use wifi calling and whatsapp. Also great for waze and google maps.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Att does $1o a day. It is perfect. Verizon charges double. You can do it cheaper but it is such a pain and life is too short for that but good luck

That’s $10 per day for the first line. Each line after that is $5 per day. That can really add up for a family of 4 with 2 teens on a 14 day vacation in Europe.

Would it make sense to use the primary phone as a hot spot?

If I'm dong the math right, it's $350. Seems like a drop in the bucket compared to other travel costs (at least for my family of 6.) For us it's worth the hassle of switching SIM cards or keeping your phone on airplane mode.

Not really the way you should look at- imagine you had to run a 15 minute errand to save $350. Would you do that? Of course you would. Now, I get the potential hassle, etc, and might not do it to save $50. But for a long trip the $10/day (especially for multiple phones) really adds up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As someone mentioned tmobile has international roaming. It was fine for texting and calling. Data was somewhat slow and I couldn't use facetime. It worked fine for a long weekend.

I am going on a longer trip and I added T-mobiles upgraded international service so I could have faster data and it may have been $50 for 10 days. They had one that cost less for less data though. I can't remember the cost off the top of my head.

Which T Mobile base plan do you have? I thought with Magenta Max you get 5 GB of high speed data in Europe before it slows down to low speeds.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As someone mentioned tmobile has international roaming. It was fine for texting and calling. Data was somewhat slow and I couldn't use facetime. It worked fine for a long weekend.

I am going on a longer trip and I added T-mobiles upgraded international service so I could have faster data and it may have been $50 for 10 days. They had one that cost less for less data though. I can't remember the cost off the top of my head.

Which T Mobile base plan do you have? I thought with Magenta Max you get 5 GB of high speed data in Europe before it slows down to low speeds.

Yes that's the Magenta Max plan. Older cheaper plans only get the 5GB high speed in a few countries where T-Mobile has tight corporate connections (Germany is one through Telekom). But the slow data is still fine for directions, VOIP calls, etc. Just can't be looking at complex web pages, watching videos or uploading a bunch of pictures. Which aren't things you do a lot, hopefully, when out and about on vacation.

[Anonymous]

Has anyone used Google Fi in Europe for texting?

[Anonymous]

I've bought the $10 a day plan and also used international roaming. I find international roaming to be cheaper in the end.

[Anonymous]

What do you use if your child is studying abroad for the semester?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What do you use if your child is studying abroad for the semester?

Just have them pickup a local SIM when they get there. Monthly plans in Europe are normally really reasonable- around $30/month or so for probably 50-100GB of data. Always prepaid a month at a time, so you don't have to make any commitments.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What do you use if your child is studying abroad for the semester?

Just have them pickup a local SIM when they get there. Monthly plans in Europe are normally really reasonable- around $30/month or so for probably 50-100GB of data. Always prepaid a month at a time, so you don't have to make any commitments.

Here's an example from the UK- 26 pounds per month for 125GB.

https://shop.ee.co.uk/sim-only?selectedPlanCode=X22PS0114&entryGroupNumber=1#choosePlanAnchor

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As someone mentioned tmobile has international roaming. It was fine for texting and calling. Data was somewhat slow and I couldn't use facetime. It worked fine for a long weekend.

I am going on a longer trip and I added T-mobiles upgraded international service so I could have faster data and it may have been $50 for 10 days. They had one that cost less for less data though. I can't remember the cost off the top of my head.

Which T Mobile base plan do you have? I thought with Magenta Max you get 5 GB of high speed data in Europe before it slows down to low speeds.

Yes that's the Magenta Max plan. Older cheaper plans only get the 5GB high speed in a few countries where T-Mobile has tight corporate connections (Germany is one through Telekom). But the slow data is still fine for directions, VOIP calls, etc. Just can't be looking at complex web pages, watching videos or uploading a bunch of pictures. Which aren't things you do a lot, hopefully, when out and about on vacation.

Umm. I have a very old plan I think. It is called Select Choice Family Unlimited TT 70. It includes Simple Global which is text and up to 5GB of high speed data (but I don't think its really high speed).

When I traveled in Nov (to the Caribbean) I didn't buy any add ons and I was able to text for free. I also had data but is was very slow. As noted, it would not work for video calling. I don't think I ever tried it for directions, but it seemed fine with most webpages. I think it then charged me .25 cents a minute or something for phone calls.

I just looked and I added the international pass which gives you free calling. It was $35 for 10 days. But I guess I don't really need that so I suppose I can save $35. In my head I was thinking this add on would get me faster data, but maybe that is not really the case! I was just concerned (not because I am going to be on my phone) but because everything seems done via smart phone (all the tickets we have to places, including the train) and I was a bit paranoid about stuff not working. But PP you are right they are all basic websites so hopefully it would be fine (I was also in less developed country, so things might be better in Europe anway).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What do you use if your child is studying abroad for the semester?

Just have them pickup a local SIM when they get there. Monthly plans in Europe are normally really reasonable- around $30/month or so for probably 50-100GB of data. Always prepaid a month at a time, so you don't have to make any commitments.

NP. So you just buy the local SIM card when you get there, swap it out, and you’re good to go? Is it that simple?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What do you use if your child is studying abroad for the semester?

Just have them pickup a local SIM when they get there. Monthly plans in Europe are normally really reasonable- around $30/month or so for probably 50-100GB of data. Always prepaid a month at a time, so you don't have to make any commitments.

NP. So you just buy the local SIM card when you get there, swap it out, and you’re good to go? Is it that simple?

Yes, assuming the phone is SIM unlocked. But you get a local phone number with the new SIM. Really not a significant issue nowadays with Whatsapp/Facetime/etc, which use data only.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What do you use if your child is studying abroad for the semester?

Just have them pickup a local SIM when they get there. Monthly plans in Europe are normally really reasonable- around $30/month or so for probably 50-100GB of data. Always prepaid a month at a time, so you don't have to make any commitments.

NP. So you just buy the local SIM card when you get there, swap it out, and you’re good to go? Is it that simple?

Yes, assuming the phone is SIM unlocked. But you get a local phone number with the new SIM. Really not a significant issue nowadays with Whatsapp/Facetime/etc, which use data only.

One thing to keep in mind is the call to your child on a foreign cell phone will be very expensive if you don't have an international calling plan, so you should use What's App to call instead of just calling using the phone.

[Anonymous]

We switched to Google Fi but before that used Whatsapp on Wifi and downloaded maps when we needed them.