AT&T Iphone use in Europe

[cachatz]

I'm planning a trip to Germany. This is the first time over seas for me so I was wondering if my phone will work over there. Is there something I need to do?? Even if the phone will not work will I be able to use the maps to get around??????

Thanks for your help
Chris

[confucious]

It should work - but would be VERY expensive.
Check out Wireless International Rates | Wireless from AT&T, formerly Cingular
If you're over there for any length of time it might be worth unlocking your phone and getting a local SIM.
What FW are you on?

[bhz1]

Ive been to Germany twice with an iPhone. Once with a 2G and once with a 3G. It worked great. My husband has used his iPhone in Hungary, Sweden, Ireland, UK, Denmark, and Italy as well with no issues.

Roaming rate for calls from Germany is $1.29 a min but if you buy the World traveler plan (forget if that is the exact name) its something like $5
a month, the roaming rate drops to $0.99/min. If you dont travel overseas often its not worth it. Text messages are $0.50 each and one can type very long texts. I texted my son quite a bit when I was overseas. The bigger issue is data. International data is extremely expensive. I bought an iPhone international data plan for $24.99 (20 MB)the first time and for $59.99 (50 MB)the second time. Its a good insurance policy because otherwise you can run up a data bill into teh thousands of dollars quite easily. I thought Iwas on wifi at a friends home and ended up with 20 MB of data useage for some reason. Lucky i had the data plan. If you dont plan on using data at all you can turn off data roaming in your settings and never ever open anything like mail, safari, weather, etc... anything that makes a data connection. Turn push mail off and set mail to fetch to manual. My husband has a 2G without a data plan at all and has never been charged a penny for data.

If you do buy an international data plan, make sure you add it to your account prior to the billing date prior to your trip. If not, they will prorate the amount of allowed data until the next billing date. This happened to me once where i thought i was paying for 50 MB which I kept careful track of, yet i received a bill including $250 of data charges. yet my usage was within the 50 MB. A call to ATT informed me that becasue I had added teh plan a week after my billing date I was prorated data WTF???? I was able to get them to remove the charge since that was not explained clearly. I assumed prorated ment the fee portion.

also if you do add the data plan, I advise setting the data usage in your iPhone settings back to 0 and keep track of what you use.

I'm actually very glad you posted this today because I am heading overseas on the 19th and my billing date is the 8th. It had totally slipped my mind to call and add the international data again.

One last tip, you can add the plan for the month you are going away, and once you return home and you see all your data recorded on the bill, you can remove the data plan.

[cachatz]

Thanks for all the info this will help me out a bunch

Chris

[GADeputy]

Thanks for all the info. My wife and I are planning a trip to Germany and Italy in September and I was going to ask the same questions.

[bhz1]

lad this helped.

FWIW, One can now add an international data iphone plan online. As recently as January, I had to call to add one. The less I have to actually call someone, the better.

[StealthBravo]

That's good info bhz1