Tips when taking your mobile phone overseas

Whether you're off on a jet-setting holiday, travelling for work or studying abroad, staying connected to the wider world is vital. Whether you want to communicate with friends and family back home, check Google Maps for directions or transfer money online to pay for an unexpected bill, it’s much easier if you can bring your mobile phone with you overseas.

However, before you can do that, there are a number of steps you need to take to ensure your phone will work in another country.

Consider your coverage options

The biggest consideration when taking your phone overseas is how you're going to pay for service. You can take your phone as is and use the global roaming service provided by your current telco; you can upgrade your current plan with a travel pack featuring a fixed quota of call, text and data inclusions; you can purchase a new SIM card for your destination; or you can go the data-only route and buy a mobile broadband SIM card.

Here's how these options work:

1. Global roaming

Using global roaming is the simplest option when taking your phone overseas. Provided your current telco has partnerships with local telcos in your destination country, your phone will simply connect to local networks and function much as it would back home.

There are a few caveats here. The biggest is the cost: call, text and data rates are typically much higher than they are in your home country. Coverage isn't guaranteed, either, as your telco might not have an arrangement with any local telcos at your destination. That's why it's important to check both the availability and rates of your current telco's global roaming program before taking flight.

Depending on your current telco, you may have to contact customer support to activate global roaming. Some may not offer global roaming at all, in which case you'll have to consider another option to use your phone overseas.

2. Travel packs

Many telcos offer travel pack add-ons for their mobile plans. These come with a fixed amount of call, text and data inclusions for use in select countries – travel anywhere else and you'll have to pay at your telco's regular global roaming rates.

Purchasing a travel pack can work out significantly cheaper than using global roaming. You'll typically receive a set number of texts and call minutes, saving you the hassle of calculating different rates for different countries. And because these inclusions are fixed, you don't have to worry about overspending. So long as you've disabled global roaming, you won't be able to rack up excess charges once you've blown through your allotment of calls, texts and data.

At the same time, exhausting your call and data inclusions could leave you stranded in a foreign country with no phone or Internet access. Recharging a travel pack on-the-fly can be tricky, especially if your hotel doesn't have free Wi-Fi. You could purchase larger travel packs or stack multiple smaller ones in advance, but this approach is often just as expensive as using global roaming.

3. Travel SIM

If you're looking for a pay-as-you-go solution without the steep cost of global roaming, you'll want to consider purchasing a travel SIM. These typically work similarly to standard prepaid mobile plans: you make a single payment upfront for a quota of calls, texts and data with a fixed expiry period anywhere from a couple of days up to a month or more.

Travel SIMs typically feature much lower call rates than most global roaming options, but that's not all they have to offer. Instead of paying for worldwide coverage when you're only travelling to a single destination, you can buy travel SIMs for specific regions such as the Americas or central Europe. This helps keep costs down while still giving you the freedom to cross borders without losing coverage.

The one slightly cumbersome aspect to travel SIMs is having to remove the existing SIM card from your phone in order to use them. This means losing access to any data stored on that SIM card, such as contact info. You'll also be stuck with a new phone number while you're overseas, though there are services available for diverting calls from your existing number to your travel SIM if you need it.

4. Local SIM

For the cheapest call rates and the largest data inclusions, the best option is almost always going to be purchasing a prepaid SIM card from a local retailer at your destination.

However, this can be quite tricky, especially if you don't speak the native language of the country you're travelling to. To avoid miscommunication, you may want to purchase a SIM card from the airport rather than a local retailer. Prices should be comparable, but airport retailers are typically more accustomed to dealing with English-speaking travellers.

It's also important that you fully understand what is and isn't included with any local prepaid service. Depending on your destination, some prepaid plans only cover select countries – this is especially true in dense regions like Europe. If you're travelling between multiple countries, make sure your prepaid SIM encompasses all of them.

Ask an expert

No matter your destination, if you are planning your next overseas holiday, or even travel within Australia, talk to the experienced travel team at Tertiary Travel¹, renowned for their attention to detail and great service. Call 1300 888 999.
 
This article is provided by Matt Sayer, a tech and telco expert at Finder, Australia’s most visited comparison site.

1. Tertiary Travel Service Pty Ltd is an independently and wholly owned subsidiary of Teachers Mutual Bank Limited ABN 30 087 650 459.