Filed under: iPhone
Know before you go: AT&T introduces International Data Plan for iPhone
When traveling on the high seas outside the United States, it's probably best if you power-off your iPhone: Press and hold sleep/wake for about 5 seconds and then slide to power-off. If you must use your iPhone during travel and need access to a data plan, check out this AT&T iPhone world data plan that gives your 20MB for $25/month. Participating countries include Canada, China and Mexico. Overage costs you $0.005/KB and use outside those 29 countries costs $0.0195/KB.
Thanks to Darrel N.
You can use UIctl to unload -w com.apple.CommCenter. This disables both EDGE and phone calls until you load -w it back on and survives power cycling/reboots/locks. You can also pull your SIM, unlock your iPhone and, presumably, use local SIMs.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
f.duane said 2:39PM on 9-12-2007
I wish there was a way to turn off EDGE. I plan to unlock my phone before going to Europe next time in order to use a local pre-paid SIM card, but even there data charges are outrageous. WiFi is almost ubiquitous (and much easier to find thanks to the iPhone), so there's no need for the data... Anyone know whether such a hack is in the pipeline?
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Daveed V. said 2:42PM on 9-12-2007
Rather than switch off iPhone altogether, you can call AT&T at 916-843-3685 and ask them to temporarily disable your data plan (or so I'm told).
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Bob Hodgen said 2:59PM on 9-12-2007
Just take out the sim card and the phone and EDGE are disabled but not wifi.
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Jon said 3:02PM on 9-12-2007
I had a very long discussion with AT&T about this. I taking my iPhone to Canada for a few days, and wanted to be able to make calls, but didn't want to pay the $20/MB for their a la carte data usage. I tried to add the international plan, but it has a 12-month contract attached to it, and the supervisor told me that disabling data was not an option. Instead, I told them that I would turn off e-mail checking, not use Safari, and call them and bitch about any data charges that I accrued. They seemed to agree to that; that said, I'm still waiting for the bill (and for the subsequent bitch session).
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Dave Wood said 3:09PM on 9-12-2007
Why is it that Americans roaming on a Canadian network get cheaper rates than the Canadians who live on the network?
Rogers is a child raping company. Someone has to stop them!
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Aparajita said 3:23PM on 9-12-2007
It's actually quite easy to turn EDGE off. If you can get access to the files on your phone (through any of the GUI tools available, or via TextEdit on the iPhone), do the following:
1. Open /var/root/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/preferences.plist in your editor of choice.
2. Look for the string "apn". This will be followed by "wap.cingular".
3. Delete the "." in "wap.cingular".
4. Restart the phone.
5. When you try to connect via EDGE, it will fail.
6. To reinstate EDGE service, open the file again and insert the "." between "wap" and "cingular", then restart the phone.
I'm sure some enterprising person could write a native iPhone app to do this for you.
- Aparajita
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Mike said 3:33PM on 9-12-2007
YOU NEED TO EDIT THIS ARTICLE!
As Jon said above, you have to sign a 12 month agreement to get the $25/20meg deal... NOT WORTH IT! Just don't use data - a recent trip to Toronto and a few times checking for directions stuck me with a $200 phone bill - OUTRAGEOUS!
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Glenn Rempe said 3:27PM on 9-12-2007
I agree totally with an earlier post. Apple needs to fix this for users by adding a simple switch to the iPhone prefs to turn OFF EDGE data access.
I know you can do this with airplane mode, but that also disables your wifi connection. I want to *know* that I will not incur gsm edge data charges while still being able to walk around and discover wifi hotspots. I recently traveled with the iPhone to Russia and it was a major pain having to worry about data charges every time I turned on my phone looking for wifi (and having to manually turn off all of my iPhone email accounts from checking automatically, and reversing those settings when I returned).
Come on Apple. Help us out here.
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LSC said 3:34PM on 9-12-2007
So let me get this straight...
...Americans traveling in Canada get better data rates than Canadians who live here.
BURN IN HELL ROGERS!!
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olivier said 3:36PM on 9-12-2007
going abroad for 6 weeks. Called AT&T numerous times to try to understand my options for international data plans. It's a nightmare. They don't even know. I mean, they read things on screens, tell you that in country A the international data plans work but that if you want to stop it before 1 year you'll have to pay $175 of cancellation fees, then say go to another page on their screen that says that you won't have to pay, then in some countries the rate is different, and that Kb rate is retarded too, who the hell knows how many Kbs are being used!
Apple, you need to help them on this one. I'm leaving in 6 days and i still don't know what to do!
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chinhster said 3:43PM on 9-12-2007
Jon:
Don't listen to AT&T, pull the sim when using wifi. Your iPhone can still send data through GPRS regardless of whether you're using wifi or if there's even EDGE available.
I was in Vietnam where they have no EDGE network but do have GPRS. I knew there was no EDGE and only used my iPhone at wifi cafes for Internet access so I didn't think I needed to pull my sim. However, the wifi connections tended to be pretty flaky so the iPhone attempted to connect via EDGE when the wifi dropped out. Even though there's no EDGE, it's still sending data through GPRS. There's nothing coming back but it's putting traffic on someone else's towers and they charge AT&T who will in turn, charge you their outrageous roaming fees.
So when using wifi abroad, the safest thing to do is pull the sim when using wifi because you never know how reliable the wifi connection is and you could still be connecting via EDGE without your knowledge.
Apple really needs to add the ability to disable EDGE on the iPhone like they do for wifi.
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Mike Scherer said 3:43PM on 9-12-2007
Actually the news here is that a one year contract IS NOT required.
A simple button to turn off EDGE is still very much needed because the iPhone will switch over to EDGE midstream for a variety of reasons and it's nearly impossible to catch it quickly enough to avoid serious money.
Just got off the phone with AT&T customer service and they allowed the new plan retroactively to my last month's $156 data roaming bill. THANKS AT&T!
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tim said 3:43PM on 9-12-2007
jon -
i would LOVE to hear how that goes! dont take this the wrong way, but id like to see it happen and you bitch out att. years ago, back before all that '3rd gen' stuff, when people had to pay for roaming, i was told i had free roaming and it wouldnt cost me more for my trip to texas for 2 weeks. on my 2nd to last day i figured 'what the heck' and called again to confirm it was free...it wasnt, it was 75 cents a minute. needless to say i had a high phone bill that month
you just cant trust them. good luck with it however it turns out, but make sure to stick it to them if you have to
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Aymeric said 3:52PM on 9-12-2007
It's all bull crap! Just unlock your iphone and use a pre-paid sim from the country you are visiting.
Jeeeeeez
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chrisjur said 3:58PM on 9-12-2007
First thing, this plan is not new. It was introduced the week of the iPhone launch, although AT&T kept it quiet the first few days.
I used to have a Blackberry Int'l data and roaming plan and AT&T actually called me to let me know that the plan was incompatible with the iPhone and that I would need to switch to this new plan.
I enabled the plan and traveled to the UK a week later without any problems. In regards to the concern that your EDGE usage will go through the roof, you will be fine, as long as you do the following:
1. Completely log out of Safari (or any other apps that will use EDGE). What I mean by this is hold down the home button for 8 seconds until the app closes - this ensures that it is not loading some page in the background. (just to be safe)
2. Go into Mail settings and disable each account. It will retain your settings, but will never check for mail (note, your mail messages are also unavailable at this point, but they will magically come back when you re-enable the accounts). You can also set the auto check interval to "Never", but if you have not checked mail in a while and hit the mail button, it may download a large amount of data.
I've roamed in the UK for almost 3 weeks and my total EDGE traffic was under 20K.
Another hint: reset your usage statistics when you arrive in the foreign land so you can be sure what your EDGE usage is.
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Karl said 4:17PM on 9-12-2007
Well, this is great timing as I'm sitting here with this month's bill from AT&T.
How much do you think it will cost to use ALL the functions of your iPhone on Vodafone in New Zealand for 10 days? Keep in mind, used it every day, all day, while skiing, no function turned off, emails coming through etc......I have the international/world calling plan, and international text messaging...but sadly not the plan mentioned in this article.
$1,164.81 US....
$583.78 for Roaming calls
$581.03 for Data/texts
This should clear up on why its important to turn off features even with the roaming data plan. Thankfully, the business pays for it, not me personally.
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Josh said 4:28PM on 9-12-2007
hey - I HAVE GREAT ADVICE FOR ANYONE IN NEW YORK STATE
my mother, the wonderful domestic violence attorney she is (represents battered women for free to put scumbags in jail) had a recent dispute with att/cingular over some charges my younger brother had made to their family plan by calling up att/cingular and adding a large texting package to his account.
VERBAL CONTRACTS ARE NON-BINDING IN NEW YORK (as well as many other states) therefore, you can add the international data plan over the phone and then cancel it and avoid an early termination fee. she did this with one of their family plan lines as well and did not have to pay the bogus $175 charge.
i am not sure if this is actually true, the non-binding part, but ive seen her beat the phone company with that statement three times now...hope this helps
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Rob said 4:51PM on 9-12-2007
This is a chance for ATT to stop the gouging and do the right thing for all its customers. I know it is not JUST ATT, but also its partners, that have to act to make the roaming rates lower but the prices are outrageous. If enough people complain to their congressperson, we might see some legislation enacted that makes the charges fair- ie, comparable to the best local rates that the person is roaming in.
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Nicholas Arvanitis said 4:56PM on 9-12-2007
Hardly international, but it's better than nothing.
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Mike Cohen said 5:04PM on 9-12-2007
I'd like to be able to turn off EDGE *ONLY* and still be able to make & receive calls at my regular number (which is NOT the case if you remove or replace the SIM card).
I was in Vancouver for a week and I got $300 in roaming data charges. I always keep automatic email checking turned OFF to avoid wasting battery power, although I did check manually several times a day, and used Safari, Stocks, Weather, and Maps.
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