FWIW, last night the iPhone did an amazing job of navigating me from the South Kensington tube stop to the small pub about a mile away in Chelsea, where I was meeting some other folks. Of course, Google deserves most of that credit; but the GPS in the iPhone made a big difference too. I also see it took 1.2 Mb of my now-budgeted 20Mb/mo to make the walk.

I also have a real Garmin eTrex Vista CX GPS I can take. I’ll need to get local maps for that, but it would be a cheaper alternative. Meanwhile the cost of “data roaming” has me steaming. I mean, I have no problem paying carriers for services rendered. But there has to be something broken with any service that makes you hate the provider(s). This is one of those cases. T-Mobile’s “roaming” within their own damn system is another example. I know T-Mobile is in some ways the best of the lot; but there’s a lot wrong with that particular “service.” Shit, I pay T-Mobile $29.95/month to use their wi-fi access points. Those points access the @#$% Internet fergoshsakes. Why act like a phone company and create artificial scarcities across national boundaries that the Net transcends? If it actually costs more to provide Internet service in some country, do this: say so, on the login page. Customers have no problem paying for passed-through costs that can be understood. But in the absence of that customers see this kind of shit as pure shakedown and Old Skool Telco mentality at work: screw your captive customers… because, well, what else can you do?

See Pat already mentioned it too so just second that recommendation. Fring will let you use Skype over WIFI on your iPhone. Great little app.

My current overseas package includes:

* unlocked GSM phone + local pay as you go SIM for country I’m in (for local calls to folks and to receive calls from US)
* iPhone for mobile data access (usually via wifi) and Fring
* Laptop with Skype (for calls from the hotel)

I also forward my Skype in numbers to my overseas mobile so people can call me on a US or UK number and it will flip to me wherever (when in the US I forward Skype In to my iPhone).

I used to spend about £100 a week on overseas travel phone calls. That’s down now to about £10 a week thanks to Skype.

I don’t plan to use this phone much. I just want people to be able to reach me, and vice versa. Meanwhile I’ve turned off pretty much everything, including nearly all applications, reducing the iPhone to the aveage (at best) phone it actually is. One positive thing: it knows I’m not in the US and automatically adds the 001 (+1) to calls to the U.S. My old Nokia wouldn’t do that.

Oh, didn’t mention the $.50/$.20 charge for sending/receiving text messages. Pretty sucky.

The irony here is that I worked out everything over the “phone” with AT&T by calling the +1.916.843.4685 number through Skype on the laptop. The laptop as a speakerphone worked very well, which it needed to, since the only place in the hotel room that the phone works is by the window. There I get five bars of signal. At the desk here I get one or none.

I don’t know how much SkypeOut call credit I had before calling AT&T (not more than $10), but now it says, “Skype Credit balance $8.75. Almost 6 hours of calling at SkypeOut Global Rate.”

That beats the shit out of AT&T’s deal, about which Todd (last comment above) is right.

You should set up the international calling plan that AT&T has (at least for the month that you’re traveling). It’s $4.95 or so, but will save you more than that in discounted rates (albeit still outrageous).

International roaming is the biggest scam by cell phone providers. It’s the last bastion of the horrible roaming fees that were charged in the 90s before companies began rolling out nationwide calling plans.

The iPhone AT&T sold you only supports the North American bands, but not the more popular ones used in Europe. On the other hand, iPhones sold in Europe etc. only support 900 MHz and 1800 MHz. I bought the 3G iPhone and, before I subsequently sold it, read all the fine prints it came with. The manual said it only supports either 850/1900MHz or 900MHz/1800MHz.

In other words, your iPhone is just a bigger, more expensive iPod Touch for the rest of the time you spend in Europe. If you must make your cell phone number available, you can probably buy/borrow/rent/steal a cheap unlocked phone and stick your AT&T SIM card into it.

FYI: For those who said their Blackberries work just fine roaming in Europe or elsewhere in the world, that’s because most Blackberries have tri-band/quad-band support. RIM designed the Blackberry for business people who actually travels around the world often. Many higher end models from Nokia and Motorola, even if a few years old, have tri/quad-band support as well.

You can call them from Skype on your notebook. They will activate you. (just did this for someone 3 weeks ago)