When travelling, mobile phones can be extremely useful or extremely frustrating. It often all depends on how far you’re travelling and whether your phone works when you get there or not. There are certain things to keep in mind which will help lessen the frustrations.
Your mobile phone is not likely to work in areas of Africa and other places where there is little Westernisation. The USA works on a tri-band system, and most European phones work on a dual band system. Your mobile phone company will be able to tell you if your phone is dual only, or if it will work on tri-band too.
International Roaming
Assuming your phone will work in your chosen destination, you’ll then need to make sure you have international roaming enabled. Generally this is turned off as standard to stop the phone being stolen and shipped abroad for use there to run up huge bills. Ask your provider to enable the international roaming feature, but be aware some won’t if you’re on pay as you go.
Check international provider charges for using the phone abroad before you travel. Some charges can be extremely high with texts being charged twice when you’re abroad and calls being a lot pricier. The RoamAndPhone.com website can be useful in helping you to reduce international mobile phone costs as they offer pre-paid international SIM cards with no service charges and no minimum contract.
New SIM or Rent-a-phone
You can buy a local SIM when you arrive and this is often cheaper if you’re planning on staying a while. However, some operators lock their phones so they can’t be used with other SIM cards so you’ll need to make sure your phone is unlocked if you wish to do this. Alternatively you could investigate the option of renting a phone when you reach your destination.
Call Forwarding & Call Barring
When using your phone abroad you may well be charged to receive incoming calls as well as making outgoing calls. If you don’t want to pay out to receive calls from your friends then it’s sensible to bar incoming calls. There are two ways of doing this – either forwarding all your calls to your voicemail where you can retrieve them when you return home, or barring incoming calls completely while you’re away. To do either your provider should be able to set this up quite easily for the duration of your holiday.
Changing Networks
Some networks are cheaper for roaming than others so check which is cheapest in your chosen destination and then select it rather than letting your phone do the selecting for you as it will select the strongest signal not the cheapest tariff.
Phone Safety
Mobile phones are great targets for theft. Keep them hidden whenever possible and keep a note away from your phone of the provider’s customer service number as well as your phone’s serial number and phone number – these will be useful in blocking the use of your phone if stolen.
Extra tips
Take a travel adapter with you so you can keep your phone charged up.
Remember in the Russian federation it is law to register your mobile phone on arrival.