I've most often seen questions about travelling with iPad and iPhones, so thought I'd send the group my recent experience which may help someone from asking the question over again.
I have just spent a month travelling France, Switzerland, Austria and Germany. Most of the time we were in France and Germany. In Australia I have a data plan with Telstra that gives me 1Gb per month. A French friend bought a SIM card for me in France for the Orange network, with the aim of limiting the roaming charges on my Telstra SIM. When we arrived in France, I paid 35€ onto this pre paid SIM card, about A$50, and left 3G and data turned on, thinking this was a sensible option. I was looking forward to using the mapping, internet for searches for accommodation, local things to do etc. All the features I was used to in Australia. The next morning I got a text from Orange to say I'd got 3€ left. Eeek. I'd not used the iPhone at all, it was chewing through this data all by itself. And what's more, part of the place we stayed had good WiFI connection. Part of it didn't. When my French friend navigated my account usage on the Orange website, he found a long list of data downloads, each with a flagfall of 50c (I think), and whilst the data downloaded was minimal, the time was what was being charged for. This is unlike Australia where we get charged for the amount of data, not the time. At least that's how my Telstra plan works for 3G and data. Lesson learnt, I turned off both 3G and Data, loaded another 20€ onto the SIM, and resolved to never turn them on again. What I found was that calls and texts from France into Germany or anywhere else incurred international rates. When we travelled into Switzerland, Austria or Germany, all calls and texts were charged at roaming rates. Phone signal strength was pretty good all the way around Europe, and the Orange SIM connected with various different providers as we moved through their region. Frankly, the only advantage I can see of getting a local SIM card is if you want to make calls or send texts within the country you are in. Data was out of the question, and no one could help me find a pre paid that was any better deal for data. Folks, we have it good here in Australia! My son kept his Optus prepaid SIM on a standard phone without any data features. He paid $3.50 for each text he sent anywhere, and similarly high calls costs. BUT - he is on the Optus Turbo Cap so for $30 he gets $300 worth of calls, including international roaming. He figured the advantages of keeping his own number outweighed the high call costs, in particular that the plan allowed him to use his bonus value on international calls. Sure, he couldn't use data, but it seems like a pretty good option for phone and text. It's very difficult for foreigners to buy a SIM in Europe, so it's not easy to just go buy a new SIM for each country to avoid roaming charges. It also means your dial in number would change, not very useful for being contacted from home. So often when travelling, you need to phone ahead to make arrangements for where you are going in a few days. This is often in another country - which equals roaming rates. WiFi was sometimes free around cities, or in accommodation. Often it was only accessible in the lobby, often it was slow, often it dropped out. Only sometimes was it reliable and a good speed. I had purchased Groundwire, an app for voice calls over 3G or WiFi. I also had Viber and Skype available on both the iPhone and the iPad. I can't really recommend one over the other, we mainly relied on emails for making accommodation bookings. Unless you can speak the language, making bookings online is a much better option. So much like all the other stories I have read, there is no easy solution to good data rates when travelling mainland Europe. It is best to simply turn off 3G and Data on the iPhone - Under Settings: General: Network: Enable 3G - Turn it OFF. On the same screen, Cellular Data. Turn it OFF. So do not plan to use data whilst you're travelling during the day in the same way you would in Australia. Plan to use it in your accommodation, but don't rely on the promotional material to be telling the truth that they have WiFi. If you are going to need to use mapping to find your next accommodation, prepare the night before when you have WiFi; find the hotel on Maps and take a screen print of it - hold down the Home button and the Power key. The resulting image is stored in Photos. As I said above, we have it good here and get very used to just checking something on the iPhone or iPad as we want (different from a 'need'). It takes some adjustment to step back and live life on the tourist trail without 1Gb of data allowance. A couple of good apps I found were translator apps made by Lonely Planet. We stayed with a couple in country Normandy, who spoke more English than our French but fundamentally we could not communicate with each other. Using the app made conversations happen, and the experience enjoyable. Maps of the Metro systems in Paris and other towns were helpful too, to plan travel routes. DBahn have a good app for planning train travel. Booking.com has a good app for booking accommodation, One observation is that Australians are relatively popular in Europe. People are interested in our country. Before you go, prepare a set of photos to show them to Europeans you comes across - at the airport lounge, at the bar, coffee shops, on the long distance trains, on the tourist coach, where-ever you might find yourself with some one from somewhere else. Things about our city, our land, how we live, all the things we take for-granted. This makes a great conversation piece and breaks down many barriers. I hope this long summary helps others in some way. The main take away is - do not expect the same data services as you get here in Australia. Do not plan for a high level of data downloads, it's not there. Tim -- The WA Macintosh User Group Mailing List -- Archives - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/archives.shtml> Guidelines - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/guidelines.shtml> Settings & Unsubscribe - <http://lists.wamug.org.au/listinfo/wamug.org.au-wamug>
