Departing Deals: Travel More, Spend Less

Ever been stung by a huge cell phone bill after getting back from a trip? I have… for $450 and I barely even used my phone. On my most recent trip, I was determined to cut off the gold rush for my cell phone company (ahem..Rogers…ahem) and find a cheaper way to stay in touch…

Note: These tips may not work for everyone, but perhaps they’ll inspire you to find creative ways to save some cash on your next voyage.

So here’s what I did…

First, I checked out the options with Rogers (my wireless provider) for US voice/data buckets, but the prospects were quite disappointing…definitely not worth committing to 3months of inflated phone bills to save a few pennies per minute for my two-week trip.

My next thought… since I have an unlocked and jailbroken iPhone and was traveling to a major US city, I figured I’d leverage my phone’s WIFI abilities and use VOIP where I could. I downloaded a few different VOIP apps (free ones) from the Apple store, spent about an hour configuring them to use my Vonage and Skype accounts and crossed my fingers while I made my first call. To my surprise, it worked! Yes, there was a little delay in the voice transmission, but it was bearable… especially since it was essentially free. On the downside, if I dropped my WIFI connection I also dropped my call and finding unsecured access points ended up being a little more difficult than I’d expected.

I used the VOIP method for the majority of calls for the first two days of my trip, but eventually became frustrated by always having to hunt down a WIFI connection.  So, I set my sights on my final hope… prepaid access.

I knew that AT&T had a few prepaid options available, but being used to the ways Canadian providers seem to screen prepaid accounts, I was skeptical that they’d let me sign up for one without having a US address. I did a little reading online and saw that they had two main prepaid plans plus add-ons options for data. The prices seemed reasonable, though I wasn’t sure what the SIM itself would cost, so I headed out to find an AT& T store.

Armed with some knowledge, I headed off to an AT&T nearby my hotel, approached one of the staffers and asked if I could get a prepaid SIM with a 500MB/month data add-on. Her first question was what kind of phone it was for. When I showed her my iPhone, her reply was that I may as well just get one of their $10 phones because the data plan wouldn’t work with the iPhone anyhow. When I questioned her about why data wouldn’t work, she simply said, “because everything on the iPhone goes through Safari and this data plan only works with our special browser”. This didn’t make much sense to me but I said I’ll just go for the basic plan ($1 for every day I make calls + $.10 per minute) and load up $20 (the SIM itself was included free). I was still half expecting to be denied because I’m Canadian. However, that never became an issue. She simply used my name and the address of where I was staying in the US and within 5 minutes I had a brand new US phone number. Sweet!

I went back to my hotel; pleased with the prospect of spending $.10/minute + $.04/MB data instead of $1.70/minute +  $30.00/MB data + $.60/text msg. (yep - that’s what it would cost me otherwise), but the data plan comment just didn’t sit right. Knowing how much I’d be saving on voice, I decided to purchase the data plan anyhow and just see for myself. I called up AT&T and had it added on. I swapped out my SIM an hour later and had fully functioning voice and data! The only downside, I’d be using a different phone number on my trip.

I used the prepaid for the rest of my trip. In all, I loaded $40 on it and somehow (due to some first time loading bonus) ended up coming home with $17 balance that carries forward for months and a SIM card I can reload on my next trip. So, for two weeks of calls plus data, I’d spent $23. Woot! That’s the way to save!

So, to sum up, do some research, and if you’re able to get away with using a different number (just call it your travel number) on your trip, prepaid is the way to go.

Cheers!