How to beat Australia's 'global roaming' rorts

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Wednesday, 15 June 2011 15:20

Your IT - Mobility

With the OECD putting Australia at number three on the list of most expensive global roaming rates for data users, at an average of $12 per megabyte, why pay ridiculous rates for your mobile broadband use when overseas?

A fascinating pair of articles has just popped up over at the Sydney Morning Herald and at Australian Business Traveller.

Here we learn that Australians pay through the nose for mobile data roaming, with no way for Australians to easily find out what their mobile data usage is while overseas, roaming through their existing SIM cards.

There's comment from ACCAN and people who have been ripped off, and for sure, it is a very sad and expensive story.

To fix this problem, especially in the absence of tardy and fat telcos who are swimming in all the roaming cash, there's only one solution: don't use your mobile phone for data while overseas, and if possible, don't use your SIM card on roaming, either.

Happily, while it can depend on which part of the world you are travelling to, there is an easy solution - which can work out to be much, much cheaper than the hundreds or even thousands of dollars of 'bill shock' that can arrive in the mail in your phone bill after you've returned from your overseas journeys.

The first step, if you plan on using your SIM card on roaming to receive and make calls, is to switch off data roaming on your smartphone, and/or switching off cellular data altogether.

This way, your phone won't start doing Internet activity behind your back, or perhaps literally under your nose, as that capability is switched off.

The next step is to then get an unlocked personal Wi-Fi hotspot and to buy a data-enabled SIM card in the country that you're visiting.

This way, you can connect your smartphone to your own personal Wi-Fi hotspot, with that country's local SIM card.

Yes, you may need to do some research before you travel on which provider in that country offers the best pre-paid SIM card broadband data deal, or in the worst case scenario, to do that research once you've arrived, but you will need to take a personal Wi-Fi hotspot with you.

Continued on page two, please read on!