Going out of country with AT&T

[Prissy]

A friend of mine is heading to Brazil for Carnival and didn't want to take his iPhone with him. Because he's on Verizon he would have to buy a unlocked phone which would have been kind of expensive for just this one week trip.

What I did because I'm on AT&T is buy the gophone from BestBuy for $2.99 on sale right now, then called AT&T and since my account is in good standing they gave me the unlock code. I then gave him the phone and he's on his way down there now. He'll buy a local SIM when he's down there. All you have to do is call AT&T customer service to get it unlocked.

Hope this helps you!

Cool thanks.. another choice and it's very cheap too... worse comes worse, I'll use this method

 

[vietalogy]

A friend of mine is heading to Brazil for Carnival and didn't want to take his iPhone with him. Because he's on Verizon he would have to buy a unlocked phone which would have been kind of expensive for just this one week trip.

What I did because I'm on AT&T is buy the gophone from BestBuy for $2.99 on sale right now, then called AT&T and since my account is in good standing they gave me the unlock code. I then gave him the phone and he's on his way down there now. He'll buy a local SIM when he's down there. All you have to do is call AT&T customer service to get it unlocked.

Hope this helps you!

At&t in the U.S. usually uses 850/1900 bands so hopefully Brazil uses those too. I know in Asia they use 900/1900 bands. So the best bet when you buy a phone you should buy a phone that has quad bands and that phone will work anywhere in the world with GSM.

 

[BiggAW]

Actually, all you need to do is make sure that data roaming is turned off/disabled. You do not need to put it in airplane mode.

If a call goes to voicemail, you'll get charged international roaming on that, so you'd want to block them as well by putting airplane mode on, and then using wifi to connect to the XCOM Global Mifi.

If the phone is off or in airplane mode then you won't be billed for calls that go to voicemail. You can disable the voicemail forwarding in the phone settings. You can also call AT&T to disable voicemail. Then your phone will ring for a couple minutes. Not sure if that would cause a charge as well. I can't say I have any personal experience with roaming as I have never left the country. You may want to call AT&T to check.

If you put the phone in airplane mode before you leave the US, and don't disable airplane mode until you are back in the US, then you can't possible get any international charges.

Add in GV or Vonage or something to the XCOM global, and you have a fully functional phone that can call internationally for 2.2 cents a minute and has unlimited data for $15/day. iPhonetrip.com looks promising, but I've never seen an actual review of them, or anyone mention them. They have unlimited data SIMs for as low as $8/day, and if you have a locked iPhone, you could get an older Android phone or Mifi off ebay, unlock it, and use that as a wifi hotspot for the iPhone.

Verizon will unlock their iPhones, with the exception of AT&T and T-Mobile SIMs, which are blocked.