International travel with Cell phones?

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reckedracing

reckedracing

TTIWWOP
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My boss is on Verizon and is looking to travel to costa rica for 10 days.
They have 2 iPhones and 2 LTE enabled Ipads.
Anyone ever travel internationally with a cell phone?
Do people usually go to a local store and buy a prepaid SIM card in the foreign country or is that just in movies?
 
Think it just really depends on what their plan is. Sometimes the international rates arent too bad, sometimes you'd be better of getting a sim.
I'd probably just use my google voice number while down there and use wifi as much as possible.
 
Costa Rica shouldn't be bad. Turn on an international plan in their portal. Probably be about $150 fornthentime there. Turn off data roaming and only use it when on wifi if possible. Make calls short. And you will possibly be charged for text messages.
 
at&t offers an international plan for $30 for a base package of a few min, a handful of texts, and a couple hundred megs of data. im sure verizon has a similar package.
besides, i didn't think verizon used sims?

long story short- avoid using the phone as much as possible because it's stupid expensive even with a plan.

turn off data, use wifi and an app like line, and enjoy vacation, leave the phone off most the time.
 
It doesn't make sense to buy a sim card unless you are going to somewhere like china or africa. Latin America and the Caribbean isn't that big of a deal. Neither is Europe. Call up verizon, tell them you need a month of international and they'll set it up. I mostly like to have my phone be active for GPS if i'm driving somewhere.
 
Don't expect LTE to work. The US LTE bands are different than every other country in the world. Prepaid data is expensive. Your best bet is to call your provider with a list of the countries you'll be staying inside, and go from there.

Verizon is actually one of the worst providers for global roaming, but they're partnered with a handful of providers that provide decent service. Think of them as buying the local-brand generic ketchup, then selling it to you. IIRC, Vodafone is their central america partner.
 
We checked out the verizon options. They are pretty expensive.
I think it was about $30 for each ipad for 200mb data, and $50 for each cell phone with maybe 100 minutes, 100 texts and 200mb data. (Don't quote me on prices or limits, besides the 200mb data)
My only concern is they seem to go through about 6GB a month of data and will be there for 2+- weeks so the data could get costly if they don't keep it in check.
It is what it is, thanks for all the opinions/help.
 
I don't think Verizon phones take sim cards, unless something changed in the past 4 years with their phones.

Verizon has been terrible for international travel since they only use the CDMA networks (or used to anyways). I know the carribean uses CDMA, so they might have it in Costa Rica as well. When I worked at Symantec we had verizon blackberry "world phones" that had dual band to allow GSM/GPRS. Of course work paid for that phone so I used data like I typically would.

ATT phones take a sim, so you can easily buy a prepaid sim card when you get there with data and throw it in the phone. You'll get a different number when you do this though.
 
yea, verizon phones take sim cards for a number of years now, maybe 2012 or 2013
my moto droid from 2009 did not have a sim, but the droid 4 that came out in 2012 did have one
the iphone 5 on verizon had a sim card, not sure about the 3 or 4
 
long story short, leave the devices to as little use as possible. plan to disconnect.

get wifi at the resort and make calls through facebook or line apps. unfortunately, many of these resort's internet is shit and won't support data calls like this without cutting/chopping.

I didn't get an international plan when we went the DR figuring i wouldn't use it at all except at the hotel, but i ended up racking up a $700 phone bill for internet searching for embassy addresses and calls all over as we figured out how to get home. And we were cautious about use.. The $30 plan, twice, would have covered my usage. so it was a 90% mistake on a gamble that everything would be alright, and it obviously didn't turn out that wya.
 
Briansol said:
long story short, leave the devices to as little use as possible. plan to disconnect.

get wifi at the resort and make calls through facebook or line apps. unfortunately, many of these resort's internet is shit and won't support data calls like this without cutting/chopping.

I didn't get an international plan when we went the DR figuring i wouldn't use it at all except at the hotel, but i ended up racking up a $700 phone bill for internet searching for embassy addresses and calls all over as we figured out how to get home. And we were cautious about use.. The $30 plan, twice, would have covered my usage. so it was a 90% mistake on a gamble that everything would be alright, and it obviously didn't turn out that wya.
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Which is why you can also just get a sim card from a local market for dirt cheap. They have prepaid minutes and data on them which typically include international calling (back home). This is very common practice when traveling abroad.
 
I have a company provided Verizon iPhone. When i went to Japan, my work set me up with some kind of international travel plan.

100 talk mins
100 outgoing text messages
unlimited incoming text messages
100 MB data

i think it was like $25 (that i wasnt paying for anyway, granted). I tried to be pretty frugal about data usage, and i went through and disabled data for a lot of apps that i felt didnt need cell data. I used Wifi every chance I could and I still ended up going over my 100MB cap (because 100MB is crazy low), and it charged the account another $25 block of identical coverage.
 
Ah, and in the world of smartphones he would need to take his devices to his current carrier and have them unlocked in order to use a different carrier sim. ATT will do this if you're out of contract for free. Not sure about others.
 
GSRCRXsi said:
I have a company provided Verizon iPhone. When i went to Japan, my work set me up with some kind of international travel plan.

100 talk mins
100 outgoing text messages
unlimited incoming text messages
100 MB data

i think it was like $25 (that i wasnt paying for anyway, granted). I tried to be pretty frugal about data usage, and i went through and disabled data for a lot of apps that i felt didnt need cell data. I used Wifi every chance I could and I still ended up going over my 100MB cap (because 100MB is crazy low), and it charged the account another $25 block of identical coverage.
Click to expand...

100mb is barely enough to read your fucking email these days.
 
This is why people should be dumping Verizon. With T-Mobile you have unlimited calling and text in over 140 countries included with your plan. and 4g LTE in Canada and Mexico.

Disclaimer--I've added absolutely no value to your question what so ever
 
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