Did anyone else notice the article in this past weekend's NY Times Travel Section? How to Beat Roaming Fees While Traveling in Europe is the first in a series of two articles on the subject. I not sure I saw any new information, but I did think that it was a nice summary that we can refer to when we continue to get the cell phone question. ; ) http://travel.nytimes.com/2011/08/14/travel/how-to-beat-roaming-fees-while-traveling-abroad.html?ref=travel 8/13/2011 Here's the link to the second article. http://travel.nytimes.com/2011/08/14/travel/how-to-beat-roaming-fees-while-traveling-abroad.html?ref=travel The article provides lots of additional suggestions for dealing with data roaming including renting a wifi bubble. Pam
Posted by
Tuscaloosa, AL
1152 posts
Pam, it is a good article with some good tips. Has AT&T really begun to offer lower-rate data packages? That is a definite improvement although the rates aren't super cheap. But no 4 or 5 figure bills to surprise folks when they get home. One thing the article didn't mention was using a prepaid SIM with a data package. That still is the cheapest option, short of just using wifi. The article did talk about what it called a "wifi bubble," but it didn't really tie it to local SIM cards. Instead it mentioned some travel phone firms. Interestingly, the article from the week before did discuss buying a local European SIM. How to Beat the High Costs of Dialing Abroad.
Posted by
Vernon, Canada
32216 posts
Pamela, Interesting article! Thanks for posting. It sounds like Cell networks are at last starting to address the issue of high data roaming costs, and I'm sure these aren't the last improvements we'll be seeing. Paul, They did mention the aspect of pre-paid data packages towards the end of the article, using Telestial as an example. When I finally decide to buy a Smartphone, hopefully there will be some good data plans available for travel. Cheers!
Posted by
OP
New York City, NY, USA
5678 posts
I just added the link to this week's NYTimes article on Data Roaming. Check it out. Interesting suggestions. BTW I found out from the webmaster that links with a "?" in them can't be formatted as a hyper link so you have to cut and paste. ; (