Does Kevin Maney
take requests? I do hope so, because Walt Mossberg’s mailbox
column this morning uncharacteristically raises more questions than it answers.
(Update: Never mind. I’ve answered
all these questions, and more, myself.)
Until Apple initiates iPhone service with foreign carriers, which is expected
to be a gradual process that will begin in Europe, iPhone owners traveling
abroad will be forced to roam on AT&T and to pay through the nose for
data as well as voice calls made over cellular-phone networks…
For email and the Web, the best bet for iPhone owners is to avoid using cellular
networks and employ the phone’s Wi-Fi capability, which can cost nothing
extra. Try to find a free or reasonably priced Wi-Fi hot spot in which to
check email and do Web browsing. You may even be able to make cheap voice
calls this way using Internet-based calling services like JaJah
(mobile.jajah.com) which, in my domestic tests, worked properly via the iPhone’s
Web browser.
"Pay through the nose" is right. It’s almost impossible to find international
data rates on the AT&T website, although if you look hard enough you’ll
find a special international data plan
for people who want to pay an extra $25 per month. I tried asking the support
people, and they told me that without that plan, international data costs $.0195
per kb, or $19.97 per megabyte. Obviously, in that case, I won’t be doing any
web browsing when I’m travelling internationally, unless I’m on wifi. But if
the wifi stops working for some reason, it would cost me $18.49 just to download
the Portfolio.com home page, once.
What’s also scary is that the iPhone automatically starts downloading data
every time you click on the Safari or Mail buttons at the bottom of the screen
– buttons which are right next to the Phone and iPod buttons. Once you
click on the Mail button, in fact, the iPhone automatically downloads your 50
most recent emails, and there’s no way of stopping it. Which can get very expensive
very quickly.
So some questions for Kevin:
- Is there some way of turning off the phone functions of the iPhone but keeping
the wifi active, when I’m using the email or web browser, to make sure that
I don’t run up enormous data bills by mistake? I have a feeling that if you
remove the SIM card, you turn off wifi functionality as well.
- Alternatively, is there some way of turning off the data service when I’m
travelling, so AT&T won’t even let me run up those bills in the first
place?
- How will JaJah help me make cheap voice calls when I’m travelling in a wifi-equipped
area? As I understand it, JaJah is a ringback service, where you type in the
number you want to call and then you pick up your phone when it starts ringing.
But international roaming rates are the same whether you’re making a call
or receiving one – which means that just placing the call directly costs
the same as receiving a call from JaJah, no?
I’m sure the answers to these questions will be of great interest to everybody
with an iPhone who intends to leave the US at any point.
Update: After speaking to a friendly woman named
Cassandra at AT&T’s international help line (800 335-4685 from within the
US, 916 843-4685 from outside the US), I think the answers to (1) and
(2) are no and yes, respectively. You can’t turn off the phone functions, but
you can phone up AT&T before you leave on your trip, and ask them
to turn off the data functions. The first person I talked to told me that would
stop the wifi from working too, but I don’t believe him.
I did, however, learn one distressing thing: the $25-a-month international
data plan has a one-year minimum contract with a $175 early-cancellation fee.
In other words, it’s useless for all but the most frequent of international
travellers, and you can’t simply activate it before you go on holiday and then
turn it off upon your return.
So now I’m trying to work out whether I should turn off all the data functions
when I’m travelling, in order to prevent an inadvertently astronomical data
bill. The thing is, it’s precisely when you’re travelling that the excellent
Google Maps functionality on the iPhone really comes into its own. Does anybody
have a feel for how many kilobytes of data are downloaded during a typical Google
Maps session?