The Travel Group

Now that smart phones have taken over the world, we need to devise stratagies for using them when on the road, particularly when you are outside of Canada/USA, where one wrong move can land you with a $500+ phone bill when you get home!

Traveling with smart phones, tablets, laptops, and other devices is the greatest thing.  You can now easily look up the phone number or address of that restaurant you meant to reserve before you left town, or plot out where exactly you are within that maze of streets in Venice, or decipher a QR code on an item in a boutique.  But, all these applications take data, and if you're not careful, it will be costly.  Simple roaming charges for phone use, in fact, can be ridiculously expensive if you don't take steps BEFORE you leave the country.  The simplest (but usually not cheapest) solution is to call your phone service and settle on a short-term (usually 30 day) "package", which typically includes voice and data, voice-only, or data-only.  If you choose voice-only, be sure to turn OFF your data before you get on the plane.  And beware: even some forms of texting (eg. Blackberry Messenger) can be a heavy data hog.   If you decide on the no-data option, you can generally still access the Internet and use other data-heavy apps, as long as you can connect to wifi, free or otherwise.  (Be aware there are viruses and malware out there now that have infected some "free" wifi providers!)  This does limit you to accessing data at fixed locations; ie. don't expect to be able to, say, use your GPS while in a car on the road because there won't be any wifi there!

Another option for cheap phone calls is to buy an "unlocked" cell phone - either here in North America (not quite that easy) or once you land in your destination.  Then, you can simply load up a SIM card at, say, $10 or $20, and reload as needed.  This is a good option because at least you know up front what you're spending, and in most cases all in-coming calls are free!  The downside of this strategy is that sometimes it is inconvenient to reload - if you try to do so by phone, you'll often be hit with a foreign language voice prompt system and if you try hunting down a bricks-and-mortar provider you may have trouble finding one that sells your SIM card.  Another small inconvenience is that unless you get your SIM card over here before you leave on your trip, you won't have a phone number to give to your family and friends before you leave.  My solution is that I keep my smart phone on; and just use it for emergency in-coming calls until I can advise anyone who needs to know what my temporary SIM card is.

It is not impossible to buy both unlocked phone and SIM card in Canada/USA, by the way.  You'll just pay a small premium for the convenience.  The Travel Group has a preferred supplier for this service.

Another strategy for cheaper phone service is to download Skype onto your smartphone.  This gives you the same free service you probably use on your computer at home.  Again, the one inconvenience might be that unless you've already negotiated a special data package, you'd be limited to using Skype only in places where you have access to wifi.

For more on this issue, check out this article in the Toronto Sun.