Questions and Answers

When you guys travel international what do you do for cell phones? Do you have international calling through your carrier? Going to the Ukraine in September and trying to figure it out before I go.

I’m on T-Mobile which allows international texting and data at no additional charges. Just know that the included data is SLOW but fine for me. I connected to WiFi when necessary. You can pay for high speed data if you want.

Otherwise, I would look into getting a local SIM.

I use a local SIM card, which works well for me. What cell phone provider do you use in the US?

I use AT&T in the US, and have an IPhone.

How long are you traveling for? If youre traveling for a short period, it might make sense to add one of AT&Ts international plans and then be very careful with how you use it. And WiFi whenever possible.

If you’re going to be in one place for an extended period – local sim is the way to go.

I had a 3 week trip to multple destinations and I found it better to open an account on TMobile and then cancel it when I returned (This was when I was still with AT&T and was after this trip that I decided to make the jump to TMobile). If you do this, I’d open the account a few days before travel and then call TMobile and make sure they know youre traveling. I opened my account the morning I was flying out and when I got to Milan, they froze my account since it was new and I was international. Fraud protection. I had to connect to WiFi at my hotel, call TMobile over WiFi using Vonage to fix the problem. Was not fun getting off the Malpensa Express and not being able to lookup directions AND not being able to find an ATM that would let me take money out of a Schwab debit card.

Ill be in Europe for less than a week. Stopping in Poland for 2 days, and then on to Ukraine For a few days as well. Trying to make sure i can call my wife and kids without it costing and arm and a leg.

If you really just need phone calls and can live without data, use Google hangouts when connected to wifi. Calls to any USA number is free, as well as texts. As long as wifi signal is strong, it works very well.

I cant say i will only use it for phone calls, may use my maps or something like that while there as well.

[USER=1430]@Cole[/USER]

Get a Mifi device and stick a local sim in that and depending on phone model set it to use the wifi connection from the mifi for data traffic?

Optionally either use an older smartphone if you have one laying around or get a cheap Android phone and set that up with a local sim and use tethering? Bonus is that you now have a local phone for calls in the Ukraine.
[URL]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MiFi#Alternatives[/URL]

More long term, there is also Android based smartphones out there that is dual sim compatible and where you can chose which sim card will be used for data.

If you are planning a lot of international travel in the future this might be worth looking into the next time you change your phone.