Watch Out for Excessive AT&T/iPhone Roaming Charges

Not an agile post, I originally did this for my personal blog, but thought I would share this story anyway... hope you enjoy!

The past couple of years I have had the opportunity to do some pretty cool business travel.

Early in 2006 I had the opportunity to take a business trip to India. We travelled to Pune through New York and New Delhi. We were fortunate to have a day of sightseeing in New Delhi and an extra day for a side trip to see the Taj Mahal. The way home included an extended layover in Paris where we visited the Louvre and the Eifel Tower.

The following year, I took a similar trip to Pune, but travelled through New York and Mumbai, rather than New Delhi. The trip home included an extended vacation with my wife through London and Paris. At that time I had been using a Blackberry 8700 and was amazed that no matter where I went, even in remote areas of India, I almost always had coverage.

At the time I was not too concerned about the cost of international data because I knew it was expensable through the company. Once the bills came in, they were higher than normal (that would be expected) but not outrageously high. As I recall, both two week trips cost around a couple hundred dollars.

This year I made the switch from the Blackberry to the iPhone and have learned a few hard lessons about the differences in how these devices pass data.

A few months ago I spent a week at the Agile 2008 conference in Toronto Canada. While there I made very few phone calls but figured I would use my iPhone for email and internet, rather than worry about connecting my laptop to the hotel WiFi. Bad mistake. 5 days into the trip I got a text message from AT&T telling me my international data roaming was getting very high. I called AT&T and found out I had already racked up over $800 of international data usage.

You can imagine, I was totally floored. I had traveled all over India and Europe for weeks at a time and only incurred a few hundred dollars. Here I am in Canada with an $800 data bill. Pretty shocking.

Here is something to keep in mind when you are traveling to Canada planning to use your iPhone: International voice roaming in Canada is $0.59/minute. High, but pretty much to be expected. International data roaming is $.0195/KB. That is about $20/MB. 1 MB is about the size of a small digital photo downloaded in an email attachment. No wonder my data bill was that high.

AT&T offers global data add-ons for the iPhone, they are price as follows:

• $24.99/month: 20MB Data Global Add-On gives you 20MB of usage within over 65 countries
• $59.99/month: 50MB Data Global Add-On gives you 50MB of usage within over 65 countries
• $119.99/month: 100 MB Data Global Add-On1 gives you 100MB of usage within over 65 countries
• $199.99/month: 200 MB Data Global Add-On1 gives you 200MB of usage within over 65 countries

Just to give another example from the AT&T website. Opening an email with a 5 megapixel picture in it, or downloading a 3 minute video on YouTube, each takes about 2MB of data. The cost would be almost $40, based on pay-per-use international data rates of $.0195/KB. That same photo downloaded on an international data plan would cost between $2.49 and $1.99.

One AT&T customer cautions that these plans are not intended for the occasional international traveler. Overseas data charges can take up to 90 days to post to your account. If you cancel your data plan when you return from an overseas trip, the charges will be billed to your account at the rate currently active on your account, not at the time the data was actually used. Had you paid $59.99 for a 50 MB rate plan in January, cancelled the plan in February, and the data usage hits your bill in March… you would be charged over $800 for the usage, even though you had the plan at the time the usage was incurred.

There seem to be several factors that caused the difference between the telecom expense from my previous international travels and my most recent trip to Canada:

The iPhone is a much better Internet browsing device that the Blackberry (at least a couple of years ago). It is also much faster in that the 3G speeds allow you to hit full blown web pages at desktop speeds. This encourages more frequent use on higher bandwidth sites, and therefore more data charges. Also, this is unsubstantiated, but I have read that the Blackberry servers compress data before it is sent to the Blackberry. To the best of my knowledge, there is no such compression mechanism for the iPhone.

In short, be careful when you travel internationally that you do not get hit with any unexpected data charged. I have learned how to turn off all locations services, push email, and I no longer use web browsing when I am abroad.

The AT&T website publishes a set of iPhone tips for international data roamers. Here is the URL and I have attached a copy for your reading convenience:

http://www.wireless.att.com/learn/popups/international-iphone-tips.jsp

How iPhone Users Can Minimize International Data Charges:

• Turn Data Roaming "OFF": Be sure to download and install the latest version of iPhone software from iTunes. By default, this setting for international data roaming will be in the "OFF" position. To turn data roaming "ON/OFF" tap on Settings>General>Network>Data Roaming
• Utilize Wi-Fi Instead of 3G/GPRS/EDGE: Wi-Fi is available in many international airports, hotels and restaurants to browse the web or check email.
• Turn Fetch New Data "OFF": Check email and sync contacts and calendars manually instead of having the data pushed to your iPhone automatically. This way you can control the flow of data coming to your iPhone.
• To turn off the Auto-Check functionality tap on Settings>Fetch New Data, change Push to “OFF” and Select to Fetch Manually
• Consider Purchasing an International Data Package: Purchasing an international data package can significantly reduce the cost of using data abroad. AT&T now offers four discount international data packages. The 20 MB package is $24.99 per month, the 50 MB package is $59.99 per month, 100 MB package is $119.99 per month, and the 200 MB package is $199.99 per month. See att.com/worldpackages for details and international roaming rates.
• Reset the Usage Tracker to Zero: When you arrive overseas access the usage tracker in the general settings menu & select reset statistics. This will enable you to track your estimated data usage.
• To reset Usage Tracker to Zero tap on Settings>General>Usage>Reset

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