Verizon International Plan help

[brn2rnjk1]

When I first received my iPhone I had set up internationally and it worked fine in Paris (no extra data cost). I disconnected international when I came back since wasn't going to travel for a while.

On Saturday I had Verizon reimplement since I left for London. On arrival, after 15 mins, I got a warning that I had already spent $50. Verizon said they would ttake care of that when it actually shows on the bill but I have a question on how people go international with the iphone for Verizon

They claim the largest plan is only 150meg. I don't understsand how people use this phone internationally I don't do much on my data but facebook, a small amount of email et. Supposedly I used 45m within that 15 mins.

1.How do people live within this (it is also pretty expensive). Verizon didn't have a suggestion for me except to use wifi when available.
2. Is there an easier alternative?

Thanks in advance.

 

[reclusive46]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A406 Safari/7534.48.3)

Well you can get your phone unlOcked by them and use a local sim in London. Get a 3 pay as you go sim. For 15 pounds you can get unlimited data. Unlimited texts and 300 minutes

 

[brn2rnjk1]

Can they unlock it while I am in London? If so, do I buy that at any special store or do most of the cell stores have it?

 

[cynics]

I can't see sigs in tapatalk so I don't know but do you have a 4 or a 4s? From my understanding you can only unlock a 4s and use a gsm sim. Which IMO is the best way to go for international use.

 

[ReallyBigFeet]

My primary use for mobile data with my 4s when traveling internationally has been for GPS. With that, you can most certainly burn through 150megs in no time. I drove from Paris to Dieppe and had GPS on the whole time, all email and other data disabled, and burned about 65megs in data charges.

You can save yourself some data if you plug in the route while still connected to a WiFi source and then step through the route entirely. This loads all the map data via WiFi and then its 'cached' so you aren't having to re-load it while you drive.

Still, after doing this for a few trips, I had Verizon unlock the SIM for me. Takes all of 5 minutes for them to do it and as long as you have a currently-available WiFi source you can activate a pre-paid SIM in almost any country.

Full tutorial on how to get Verizon to unlock the SIM is found here:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1250863/

I don't know if this works when you are abroad. I did it when I was still in USA. Supposedly, the 'unlock' code doesn't come from Verizon but from Apple's servers (or so they said).

Still, this is far cheaper than buying Verizon's international data packages.

I have RingCentral for work and before leaving US forward my mobile number to my US based Ring Central line which then call-blasts to all my phones, international SIMs included. Then anyone who calls my mobile line directly still reaches me and I only pay like 4 cents/min for international dialing from my RingCentral phone line, plus whatever minutes I burn on the pre-paid SIM. Really works out well. Text messages are borked, obviously, but now with iMessage that's not an issue with friends and family (only ones who text me anyways).

 

[brn2rnjk1]

Thanks. Scares me a bit since don't know which card to get etc. but seems the correct route.
Finally, if not using GPS what would burn. All I did was quick facebook check and email (short). Does the location service on take a lot of data?

Also, when back in US do I just pop the old sim in and automatic or do I need to do something?

 

[reclusive46]

Thanks. Scares me a bit since don't know which card to get etc. but seems the correct route.
Finally, if not using GPS what would burn. All I did was quick facebook check and email (short). Does the location service on take a lot of data?

Also, when back in US do I just pop the old sim in and automatic or do I need to do something?

Actually you can get Verizon to unlock it internationally for free and you just put in the same once your there and take it out once you get back to US. Verizon iPhones don't have a SIM.

 

[lordofthereef]

Thanks. Scares me a bit since don't know which card to get etc. but seems the correct route.
Finally, if not using GPS what would burn. All I did was quick facebook check and email (short). Does the location service on take a lot of data?

Also, when back in US do I just pop the old sim in and automatic or do I need to do something?

International charges are insane. We are talking dollars per kilobyte. A quick facebook check, loading images and such, could certainly rack up that kind of money.

 

[aneftp]

Like the other poster said, international plans are very expensive. But if Europeans/Asians travel to the USA, ATT and other US based carriers also charge those customers an enormous amount of money to roam off USA towers.

So it cuts both ways. The carriers don't care. They have no incentive to cut you deals.

1. If you rely on GPS, your better option would be
a. Buy used GPS device for European maps on ebay for around $100. This way you won't have to rely on your data plan on the iphone.
b. Or better yet, buy the TomTom European Maps (doesn't include Russia) but includes most of Europe. Buy the iphone app for $110.

You can use the TomTom app without a sim card. Don't turn it on airplane mode. TomTom app won't work on airplane mode so take the sim card out completely.

Do you really need cellular data? You can find free hotspots. You just have to know where to look for them. Many hotel areas have free wifi connection you can log into.

I travel quite a bit. You don't need to be connected 24/7.

 

[ReallyBigFeet]

Thanks. Scares me a bit since don't know which card to get etc. but seems the correct route.
Finally, if not using GPS what would burn. All I did was quick facebook check and email (short). Does the location service on take a lot of data?

Also, when back in US do I just pop the old sim in and automatic or do I need to do something?

On my ViPhone 4s, popping in an international SIM (Pelephone, Orange, etc) automatically puts me on that carriers' network when abroad, or on international Roam on AT&T when stateside. Swapping it back out for the Verizon SIM (poster above is incorrect....Verizon phones ship with a SIM for international users) automatically puts me back on Verizon's network. I think the SIM controls the network choice automatically. I didn't have to make any changes to the phone or service thereafter.

 

[brn2rnjk1]

First, thanks to all. I have swapped a card and it works. However, Verizon (nice people) say I cannot forward to this London number from my US number since bigger digits than 10. Were any of you able to forward or find away around this?

THANKS AGAIN