Readying your iPhone for Use in Europe
Update November 2, 2007
We got back from Italy on October 19 — it will still be another month or so before all roaming charges come through on my AT&T bill, but I wanted to provide an update on my service experience with the iPhone in Europe.
While in the UK the service provider on the iPhone was Orange; while in Italy it was vodafone. Signal coverage wasn’t a problem, even when we were winding our way through rural Tuscany and Abruzzo. Outbound dialing was a little quirky; the AT&T rep told me before we left that while in Italy we dial as a local would, meaning no country code prefix, etc. However, that didn’t always prove true in practice. In some areas dialing as a local worked fine, in others I had to dial the full country code, city code, etc.
Text messaging was flawless and is how we communicated most with family we were visiting. I have the International Date Roaming plan and used my 20MB allotment of data pretty quickly towards the last few days of our trip as I was trying to catch up on email that was piling up. Data performance was worse than the standard EDGE connection in the USA, but was sufficient for what I needed to do.
Overall, my experience using the iPhone in Italy and the UK was as good as my experience using on a daily basis in the USA. Just remember to have that Data Roaming option turned off (if you’re running iPhone firmware 1.1.1)…it is off by default but you should double-check — this will save you from a data roaming bill that will send you into cardiac arrest. If you aren’t running 1.1.1 and aren’t comfortable hacking a config file on the iPhone then I suggest you upgrade to 1.1.1 so you toggle data roaming on/off as needed while overseas.
BTW, pics from the trip are here.
Original Post
I’m headed in to Italy in a few weeks and one of the most stressful parts of preparing for the trip has been whether my wife and I would be able to use our iPhones. The question isn’t one of technical compatibility with the Italian cell networks (they are GSM 900 and the iPhone is a quad-band phone which supports that protocol).
No, rather the looming worry is how we could disable data on our phones so we don’t get one of the many-thousand dollar roaming data bills folks have been blogging about over the past few months.
This lead me on a search for a way to disable the EDGE/GPRS connection on our iPhones, but still preserve the ability to make/receive calls. I found this posting http://www.blogsmith.com/profile/1353419/ which seemed logical so I tried it.
Thusfar it seems that the recipe for disabling EDGE/GPRS works. After making the edit to the configuration file using Mobile TextEdit, I reset my Usage Statistics via iPhone Settings. With the hack in place my EDGE transmit/receive stats still read zero. Also, I get the “Cannot connect to EDGE” error when I try browsing to a website in Safari.
Now I’m going to add the $5.99 International World Traveler service to my plan so I can make calls for the relatively low price of $0.99 minute while I’m in Italy (compared to $1.39 for Mobal, not to mention the cost of a phone rental/purchase).
I will post again once I’m in Italy and upon return to let you know if there are any hiccups or surprises.
Let me know how it goes when your in Italy as my daughter plans to go in Mid-December with her iPhone, and I have the same stressful concerns you had.
Mike
Mike
8-October-2007 at 15:20
If you get your iPhone unlocked then you’d be able to receive free voice calls and texts in Italy, get calls within Italy and back to the US for only 69 cents, and outgoing texts for only 40 cents! Might as well save a packet and enjoy the trip more, instead of paying it to your US provider. All you have to do is purchase a Global SIM from http://www.gosim.com for $57.99 (comes with $10 preloaded airtime) and free shipping. In all it will work in 140+ countries with a single mobile number and the airtime balance never expires, so it will be useful for future trips over the years too. Hope that helps.
David
29-November-2007 at 03:13
In 1.1.3, Settings/Network allows you to turn Data Roaming off.
The Apple/ATT message says “When abroad, turning off Data Roaming may avoid roaming charges when using email, web browsing and other data services” I’d also like to know
an example of someone’s iPhone experience and charges in Europe as we’re planning a
2 month trip to the UK & Scandinavia next month.
Olaf
2-February-2008 at 06:54
I am astounded at this: I have called AT&T and Apple. They seem awefully unsure about really what to do.
I appreciate your suggestions. So if I have roaming turned off I can still make and receive calls but will not be charged the $1.99/min romaing charge?
I will only be charged for the calls I make and whatever flatrate I have?
This leads me to what exactly the roaming feature is:
In the iPhone guide roaming is a feature that allows internet and visual voicemail over a cellular network WHEN YOU’RE IN AN AREA NOT COVERED BY YOUR CARRIER’S NETWORK.
So I gather it is a way to get a dump of emails and voicemail when out of normal carrier’s network.
I am going to Europe in a few days and I’m a bit nervous as well. I called ATT a few days ago before seeing this post. ATT decided I should turn on International roaming. I said OK. ATT were not sure what this does but they thought it a good idea to turn it on nonetheless (?)
Don
12-March-2008 at 13:05
Hello,
Checked out what David suggested, worked quite well. I just had to get used to this call back process. In Europe it is really cheap to use one of them.
Amelie
17-September-2008 at 03:47