Best Prepaid iPhone Plan In Moscow (Russia)

During my preparation for an upcoming trip to Russia, I researched and found what I believe to be the best prepaid iPhone plan in Moscow. As you may already know, my lifelong goal is to avoid the outrageous data roaming fees charged by French mobile carriers! So here come my step-by-step instructions on how to use this plan that will give you 300 minutes of local calls (landline & any mobile carrier), 3000 SMS, 3000 MMS & unlimited data (bandwidth capped at 64 kbps after 1Gb) for RUB500 (= US$17) for 30 days.

AT&T Has Affordable International Data Roaming Plans. Why Not Us?

Yes! You are not dreaming! AT&T does offer reasonable and sensible data roaming plans whereas most other carriers in the world keep ripping their customers off. Of course the US$ 199.99 plan for 800Mb of data is expensive but compared to what most carriers charge in France, it simply is the best deal ever. Those same 800 Mb of data roaming would cost with a French carrier 800 times EUR13 which amounts to EUR10400 which translates into US$15000! Can you believe that? I call for all mobile carriers to come to their senses and stop preventing their customers from using mobile internet abroad by charging them a reasonable price.

If AT&T can do it, how come other carriers don't?

Affordable Data Roaming In Europe With Blau.de

As I mentioned it in a previous post, you probably know by now that whenever I travel abroad, I use local prepaid sim cards as not only the cost of data roaming with my main mobile carrier (Orange France) is outrageous but adding a data roaming option is just a nightmare.

The advent of the Internet and even more so the mobile Internet have changed the way we interact with the world and in particular the way we travel. I can't fathom being in a foreign country without having access to Google Maps on my iPhone. In fact, it is probably the situation where Google Maps is most useful. So, why aren't our mobile carriers allowing us to use our smart-phones this way when traveling abroad?

In my opinion, data roaming plans are nothing more than a joke. With Orange France, I have the option to activate a 7-day plan for €35 with 50Mb of data in Europe or 34Mb in the rest of the world. I'm sorry but 50 Mb is a joke nowadays. And Orange France makes it even harder to use this data roaming plan as you can't activate it in advance and when you do activate it, it can take between 1 mn to 48 hours to start working. And of course, you can't subscribe to such a plan for 2 weeks in a row: you have to renew it after the first 7 days have expired (and sometimes end up without a data roaming plan for 48 hours between two 7-day periods).

Of course, Orange France will tell you that roaming abroad costs them so much money that they have no other option than to charge such premiums to their loyal contract customers. So, can anyone explain how a small virtual mobile carrier such as Blau.de is able to offer the same roaming plan for €4.99 to their prepaid customers? Yes, you're not dreaming: 7 times cheaper for prepaid customers compared to the price charged by Orange France to customers on a 2-year contract.

Combined with Blau.de offering for voice roaming in Europe: 50 minutes for 7 days priced at  €4.99, you get something like €40 per month for 200 voice minutes and 200 Mb of data for roaming all over Europe. Compare this to the €45 my wife pays on a monthly contract with Orange France for 120 voice minutes in France only and 1Gb of data in France only (plus unlimited text messages though), and you can almost reach the conclusion that it is cheaper to use a German mobile carrier in roaming mode in France than a French carrier. Isn't this completely insane?

I sincerely hope that data roaming prices will drop in the near future, granting us Europeans what I would call a true "Freedom of Information Technologies."

Many thanks to Google Translate for allowing me to access Blau.de website in English!

Prepaid iPhone Plans in the USA (Update)

As a follow-up to my previous post on How To Avoid Outrageous Data Roaming Charges, I have to point out that AT&T is now offering a 500 Mb data plan that can be combined with their prepaid voice plans. It is not destined to be used with an iPhone but it is rather easy to set it up using a custom APN profile thanks to the APN changer website! Mr SimCard's advice is to connect to a wifi hotspot once you get to the USA in order to set the APN using this website. My advice is to email the APN profile to you before leaving your home country, it will then sit in your iPhone inbox and you'll be able to install it as soon as you turn your iPhone on in the US!

If you want to call your home country or any other country, use a Google Voice account and the Google Voice iPhone app with your AT&T Sim card! International calling rates are amazingly low. The Google Voice app dials a US number that is forwarded to your desired calling destination anywhere in the world, you are hence only charged for a call to the US by AT&T (and Google Voice will charge you for the international part of the call). No VoIP call quality issue there since it does not use VoIP.

How To Avoid Outrageous Data Roaming Charges

Following up on my previous posts on how to avoid outrageous data roaming charges when traveling abroad, I wanted to mention mrsimcard.com which provides convenient solutions when it comes to using a smartphone abroad. I've already used their services twice and recommended them to friends. For a small commission, mrsimcard will send you a local sim card for the country that you are planning on traveling to. They will activate the sim card for you on the day of your choice and even follow up with an sms to make sure everything went smoothly once you've reached your destination.

Nothing beats their service. The commission they charge is totally worth it as it can save you precious time when traveling abroad (think: waiting in line in a local carrier store, trying to figure what voice/data plan will work with your smartphone while you could already be all set after deboarding the plane thanks to mrsimcard). So, whenever I travel to a country that mrsimcard has a roaming solution for, it's a no brainer for me: I just use their service.

For those of you planning to travel to the USA, they have this great iPhone plan using Simple in the USA with unlimited everything at an affordable price. Note that Simple uses the T-Mobile network which means you won't get 3G speeds when using an iPhone as T-Mobile uses a 3G band that isn't compatible with the iPhone. EDGE will work flawlessly though.

Using An Unlocked iPhone In Thailand

If you want to avoid stratospheric data roaming charges while in Thailand, here's what you should do: go to the AIS store at BKK airport & buy a pre-paid SIM card for 400 Baht + 999 Baht for unlimited data for a month. (Roughly USD 40 in total)

They will activate the SIM card for you and everything should be working after 5 mins. Internet connection works with any unlocked iPhone.

There is no 3G in Thailand (only in very limited areas actually) but EDGE works fine.
No APN configuration required. It just works out of the box!

Mail, web browsing, iPhone apps, Exchange connectivity: they all work!

Hope this helps others!