Dear Aunt TUAW: What's my best bet for international data?

nice article and great timing. I have an upcoming UK trip for abt 8 days and was wondering if I should unlock my iPhone. Also, most of the hotels in London have a surcharge for internet(don't know how much??). So this kinda solves the problem. The $4 insurance is fine, but is the booster battery pack necessary ??

First of all, don't expect that you can even go on Facebook, Flickr, etc. They're all blocked.

Second, do not buy a roaming package through AT&T, it will definitely be too much money. I just came back from Shanghai, and my Taiwanese SIM card (through China Unicom) offered me around US$5 a day for unlimited internet if you send a text to a certain number. It just gets billed to your phone as a premium text and you have unlimited (or in Chinese, 'all-you-can-eat') data. You can choose 1 day, 3 day, or 1 week, all with different prices, obviously 1 week being the best deal. If the prices look cheap, it's because Mainland phones are VERY cheap. When I was in Beijing for a bit, my data was around US$4 a month for 150MB (on a China Mobile SIM). I actually just spoke about this exact topic with my boss yesterday. He goes to Shenzhen a lot to check out factories, and he uses this service all the time. It's not related to the Taiwanese card, its a service by China Unicom 中國联通 (not China Mobile 中國移動). Force your phone to use China Unicom.

Third, do not buy a SIM card in China for data use (you might want one for phone calls though, in that case, buy China Mobile M-Zone). You aren't there long enough to wait for the 1st of the month to roll around to actually activate the data plan (they do all plan changes on the first of every month), and if you don't have a data plan, then they will charge you RMB6 (about US$.90) for every megabyte. Totally not worth it.

Third, TUAW, what a terrible job. It seems as if you just googled "international personal hotspot + cheap" and then pasted the sales pitch, and made no effort to actually check out the options available IN THAT COUNTRY. Just because he said "personal hotspot" doesn't mean that's the automatic solution. LAZY. You are encouraging this guy to pay ridiculous amounts of money and buy a bunch of crap he doesn't need when he probably will only upload stuff a few times. He isn't running a corporation and needs to be connected at all times, he's a guy going on vacation and wants to upload pictures on Facebook, which, I repeat, he can't even go on in China. I highly suggest you edit this post to include all the information I put in here, and then, Erica, you can Paypal me the money you got for "writing" this.

Sincerely,
Guy who is getting more and more irritated with TUAW and Downloadsquad.

In response to those who are saying there are wifi hotspots all over in Chinese cities. This not true if you are outside of beijing, Shanghai, or Guangzhou. I live in a "second-tier" city in China, not far from beijing. There are maybe one or two wifi hotspots in my city, which has about 5 million people. In Beijing or Shanghai, sure, you can wifi anywhere, but if you are planning to travel outside of those cities, don't bet the farm on it.

For people that have an unlocked iPhone (I used my old jailbroken 3G for travel, until I got a Canadian unlocked iPhone 4) here is a wiki with lots of answers to "Your nephew" Jason M's questions: where to get SIMs and prepaid data. Probably not so useful for one or two days or for business travel (unless you have your own small business) but it's not that much a hassle and you can enjoy cheap local phone calls too, which is nice if you know or meet people in the country you visit.

http://paygsimwithdata.wikia.com/wiki/Pay_as_you_go_sim_with_data_Wiki

Unfortunately only 30% of Americans have a passport...

1. In Chinese cities there is free wifi all over the place, so why waste money on some lame, costly data plan?

2. Try to pass through Hong Kong at the beginning of your trip, where you can by a legally nlocked, no contract from any Apple-licensed reseller. Then you can use the SIM of your choice (prepaid SIMs are also easy to buy in every Chinese city).

Jason, I would say that unless you are traveling deep into the countryside a MiFi might not be needed. I live in China and there are plenty of Wifi hotspots all over the place. Any coffee shop anywhere has one, lots of restaurants and fast food joints, even our local Krispy Kream (who's password is eight zeros in a row). So if you are going to be in cities like Shanghai, Beijing or Hongkong the whole time don't worry about it.

But do worry about being behind the "Great Firewall of China". Facebook, Twitter and a lot of other popular social networking sites are all blocked here, so you are going to need a solid VPN.

Enjoy.

You might also look at the Huawei e585 mifi (unlocked). Then you can just add a local prepaid sim card wherever you land. The mifi will let you connect up to five devices.

"I'd like to share photos, updates, etc. with friends at home."

Chances are your friends are at bed at the time you want to share anything, so save your tweets and FB updates for your hotels wifi in the evening, so your friends can read them in the morning. No hassle, no cost

Well, I have an officially unlocked iPhone and I just pop in a local SIM and browse for local rates... definitely the best deal.. (Though an unlocked iPhone is rare I know.. Easy in France after six months of contract it's free!)

I just got back from a 10-day trip to the UK, and I rented a SIM card from iphonetrip.com. Worked like a charm. For about $19 a day, I got unlimited data on my iPhone. Calls over the voice network are charged per call at a pretty expensive per-minute rate, but you can easily avoid this by using Skype over the data network. I'd never heard of Iphonetrip before, and I was a bit skeptical, but I am definitely sold. It worked great. (I am not associated with iphonetrip in any way other than as a satisfied customer.)