Attnymom

Santa brought me an Iphone, and according to ATT, I can get a European calling plan for our trip this summer. Has anyone used this calling plan and used their phone to make/receive calls while in Europe? How was the reception? Could you get your emails on your phone like you can here? Last time we went to Europe I rented phones from Mobal communications and that worked fine, but I'd love to have my own phone with my own phone number.

This technology is a little over my head, so I apologize is this is a dumb question!

Thanks in advance for any information you can provide!

seafox

be very careful!! read the posts on the apple web site. The ATT plan requires that you sign up for a year or something like that and data comes to you at a premium. You pay costs/fees to the local carrier and to ATT. I shut mine down and rip the sim card out while in Europe. I do travel with it so it is handy when flights are delayed etc. state side.

Attnymom

Thank you seafox - looks like I need to learn more about how this all works!

Robert2533

You shouldn't have any problem using the iPhone while traveling in Europe, but you are right in that you have to sign up for the international roaming plan to lower the price to what T-Mobile charges, $0.99/minutes for incoming and outgoing calls back to the States.

The email feature works the way it is suppose to, as does the web browsing feature, just be sure to turn off the "Data Roaming" while in Europe. As long as you can join a wireless service, and there are many free ones available, you pay nothing to send and receive emails or surf the web.

You can sign up for AT & T's data program while roaming, which is expensive when compared to the T-Mobile Black Berry service, but it’s different and makes a good backup plan if you happen to be somewhere where there isn’t a wireless connection available and need to send an email.

StCirq

MY son just got back from a 10-day exchange program in Normandy and used the Iphone the whole time he was there. He called me from the American Cemetery and I was on a hike way out in the woods in Maryland, and the reception was clear as a bell. It cost about $25 for him to get coverage in France for a month (the minimum you can purchase).

sunnyflorida

Your iphone works in Europe with no special plan, paying $1.29 I believe for each minute incoming and outgoing. Signing up for a plan brings it down to $.99 a minute, and there is no year minimum as mentioned in another post. You can add the plan before you go, and take it off when you get back. You can add a plan for data also, but data is expensive. Be warned.

You can use the Internet for free at free wireless internet hotspots. If you do this, be sure you have the latest updates for the phone, and TURN OFF the data under Settings, General, Network: Data Roaming OFF and use the internet only by using WIRELESS.

sunnyflorida

PS, If you use voice mail you are charged for an incoming call even if you do not answer, and there is an additional charge if it goes to voice mail, so turn off your voicemail to avoid double hits if you want. You are not charged at all if your phone rings, you do not answer, and it does not go to voice mail. Your phone will keep track of all received calls on your recent list, and you can call back. Not sure how the voicemail double charge works adding the ATT Europe plan, but thats how it works if you don't add it. The charges add up. But you do pay a fee for the Europe plan. Either way, you can make all the calls you want, but the charges are a bit much compared to what you are used to back home.

txtree

Yes, be careful of the data issue. Using the phone isn't expensive, but getting email is - especially email w/ large attachments. Last I heard, ATT was trying to work this out, but a friend recently returned from vacation to learn that he had incurred hundreds of dollars of data charges (in part because he had sent us lots of amusing photos during his trip).

Attnymom

Thank you all very much for responding to my question. I am printing off your replies and putting them in my travel folder! Great tips about turning off the VM and data roaming.

MichaelT

I’m a little late chiming in here but wanted to echo what Robert2523 described. I used my iPhone recently in Italy, Paris and London, all with no issues. Assuming you have the latest software update, data roaming is automatically turned off but it’s always good to double check this on the plane on your way over. (Settings –> General -> Network –> Data Roaming)

From AT&T you need to deal with two additions to your plan.

The first is for international calling. I pay $6 a month and calls in most of Europe are $.99 a minute. (As I’m sure you know, the coverage in most all of Europe is excellent and I had full bars even in remote areas of Abruzzo in Italy.) From what I understand from AT&T, you can add and remove this feature at any time with no wait period unlike the data plan.

The data package can bite you if you’re not careful. AT&T currently have two packages, $25 for 20mb and $60 for 50mb and you’re locked into whichever one you choose for a minimum of 3 months. Using this assumes that if you’re not on Wi-Fi, you’re using the equivalent of AT&T’s EDGE service through the local provider in the country you are in. The providers will vary by country but it’s the same basic data service.

So, a few tips I learned.

First, reset your data usage on the plane on your way over (Settings –> Usage –> Reset Statistics - at the bottom). That way as you use you iPhone in Europe you can keep tabs on your data count and not exceed your plan.

Second, try to use free Wi-Fi when you check mail or web browse. This doesn’t count against your data charges. There are countless free Wi-Fi spots in every city and the folks here at Fodor’s recently mentioned a great web site that shows Wi-Fi spots pretty much anywhere - http://www.jiwire.com/search-hotspot-locations.htm

Third, go into your email accounts (Settings –> Mail) and make sure you turn off Auto-Check. Anytime data roaming is turned on, you email accounts will auto-check if that feature is turned on. You can easily go through a MB or more an hour if you’re not careful and if you forget that it is doing this (like while you sleep). From what I researched, this was a big contributor to the $3,000+ bills for early users of the iPhone in Europe.

And lastly, although you didn’t ask this but I’ve seen other questions about it, the iPhone charger and thus the iPhone work fine on most all European electrical current. They are rated 110v – 240v which covers most every country in Europe so all you need is a plug adapter for the country you’re in and not any converters.

cherrybomb

bkmk for settings.

Attnymom

MichaelT - Thank you SOO much for you great information! I have already printed it and put it in my travel folder. Do you mind me asking which data package you chose? We will be traveling for 2 months, and my Iphone will be my source for making/receiving calls, checking emails and doing short internet searches if needed. I guess I'm not sure what exactly a "data package" means and what the different sizes offer. (I am not very tech savvy!) Also, if I am in a free Wi-Fi spot, will my phone automatically use the free wi-fi or do I have to tell it to so that it doesn't use a network I have to pay for?

Thanks also for the info re: the adapter - that was my next question!!

Attnymom

MichaelT

Attnymom,

If you’re going to be there for 2 months, I’d certainly suggest you take the 60mb per month package. I recently spent 10 days in Italy and was very conservative about my usage and even at that, I used about 35mb of it in just 10 days.

In the past when I have spent longer amounts of time in Europe (2+ months) I rarely used my iPhone for web surfing and I’ve used it very little for email as well. I’ve always taken my laptop but if this isn’t an option, get an email account that is accessible via the web and forward anything else to that account. From there, use internet café’s for most of your needs and use the iPhone only for really necessary things like trying to find that great restaurant you’re looking for somewhere in Rome at 8 at night when there isn’t an internet café nearby or that you’re too over dressed to go into!

Before I give you all the technical details about using up your data, remember you can avoid all of it by using Wi-Fi spots. To do this, keep your Wi-Fi turned on (Settings -> Wi-Fi). Your iPhone will tell you when you are near a Wi-Fi hotspot and ask you if you want to connect to it. If it doesn’t, just push Wi-Fi and it will show you the networks in your range if there are any available.

If you see the little lock, it tells you if it is a secure link or not. It also shows you your signal connection strength. If you find one that is open (no lock), you can hit it but that doesn’t necessarily solve everything. Some hotspots require log-in or pay to use. To figure this out, open Safari and see what comes up. You’ll either get your normal iPhone Safari home page or you’ll get a site asking for you to log in. If you find you’re in the clear on one, THEN you hit your mail icon and it should connect and check your email via Wi-FI without using any of your data package.

It can be a hassle to find free and open hotspots but if you’re based in an area for more than a few days there is likely one somewhere nearby. In Italy, I usually make those my spots from my morning cappuccino while I read my emails for no cost.

Also, if you use T-Mobile for hotspot roaming in the US (like at a Starbucks), you’ll find a lot of those hotspots in most European cities and you can log into your existing account via Safari on the iPhone.

Now, about the iPhone data package. Unfortunately outside the US, it’s nowhere near as good as the Blackberry package is (unlimited data) but if you’re careful, you can make it work for you.

(NOTE: As an addicted crack berry user that switched to iPhone, this is the one spot where the iPhone, simply based on AT&T’s limited service offering, is much weaker.)

The “data package” covers all of the non-call information that your iPhone receives and there are two ways to eat it up.

First is email. A typical email with just a few lines of text runs about 10-20KB. To make it simple, 1 MB = 1000 kb so if you get about 50 small-average size emails, you just used 1mb. When you get email with photos attached, graphics, etc, they get much bigger and it might only take a couple of them to eat up 1mb. or more very quickly. So, if you get a lot of email, you can easily use a few MB a day. Multiply that times two months and you get the picture. PLUS, the iPhone uses data simply to check for your email so that adds to the totals as well.

The other place you’ll use a lot of data is by visiting web sites. A very simple page like Google will eat up about .05 MB. Something like landing on Fodor’s main page is about .63 mb. and when I land on my personalized Yahoo page, fully loaded it’s about 1.5mb. Again you can see that by looking ONLY at your Yahoo main page and not doing anything else (including email) you’ll eat up the 60mb in less than a month.

A lot of web pages have mobile versions and you should look those up and bookmark them so they sync with your iPhone web links. Most of them are plain text versions so for example you can read headlines of a newspaper without downloading all of the graphics and “pretty” stuff. I live in Dallas and read the mobile version of the Dallas Morning News when I travel. I get all of the news without all of the junk that eats up data. Using the mobile versions of site becomes far more efficient and most every major site has one including newspapers, airlines and search engines like Google.

A lot of info but it’s not all as bad as it sounds. With some common sense you can easily use the iPhone and accomplish most everything and then when you get back, you too can complain to AT&T why they don’t offer an international Blackberry type data service for iPhone yet!

MichaelT

PS - here is a web link to look at for using iPhone internationally - http://www.wireless.att.com/learn/in...l=calltoaction

Attnymom

MichaelT - you are awesome! Thank you so much - I just learned more from reading your posts than I did in my hour long apple Iphone class!!

cybertraveler

bookmarking