Telephony, Internet and Communication on the Road

As I travel around Canada, I realize how spoiled I have become in the last few years. Back when I was in Slowcoaster, we were lucky to have even decent cell phone reception while travelling from show to show. Internet was something that we would have exclusively at hotels (for a price) and some venues. I can remember driving slowly through residential neighbourhoods in our sketchy, black tour van, hunting for an unsecured wifi signal to send and receive a few emails. I remember thinking that was pretty high tech (and creepy). In the last year here in Canada (and most of the developed world), 3G networks have sprung up from coast to coast, even in some of the most rural areas and small towns. Blackberrys, iPhones and most recently the iPad, have dominated the market place. In my latest trek a few weeks ago from Cape Breton Island to Digby (a town of 5000 habitants), I was able to continuously work online on my iPad the entire way, with the exception of a few minor signal drop outs. Between my iPad and iPhone, I am almost always online. To some that may seem like a curse. Always being accessible, always an email, text or call away. For me this has created freedom. I can go anywhere I want and still keep up with business. I can now go on trips and excursions I would otherwise have to skip.

Last month when I arrived in Australia with Carmen Townsend and her band, my digital wings were cut off the minute I stepped off the plane. My iPad would not go online and my iPhone just kept searching for a signal. This leads me to today’s topic: keeping connected outside of your own country. First of all, the most important thing to consider here is that if you do manage to get online with your out-of-country mobile device, the costs are almost always OUTRAGEOUS. When you buy a data or phone/text plan, these plans are almost always reserved for the country and service area that you purchase them in. For this reason, it can actually be dangerous to turn your device on in a foreign country. I can remember last year driving to New York from Canada and making a few calls to my girlfriend and downloading my emails. I also remember coming home to an $800 phone bill!

Now if you are planning to leave your country to tour and you need/want to remain connected, here are some key steps and considerations for you.

1. Buy a travel package: Contact your service provider before you leave your home country. Tell them where you plan to travel and for how long and see what sort of packages they can provide you. This varies from country to country, and service provider to service provider. When I was with Rogers and travelled to Brazil last winter, I managed to get a data and voice package for one month for a reasonable price. If your provider can give you a decent package for the country where you are travelling, this can be the simplest and most hassle free solution. I switched to Bell a few months ago and when I travelled to the US last month, they were able to give me a great package that cost very little, but for Australia their data and voice rates were horrible. This is where option 2 comes in.

2. Buy a SIM Card when you arrive in the foreign country: This option was a must for my trip to Australia due to the ridiculous cost of a travel package from my local service provider. A SIM (Subscriber Identity Module) card is a removable card that contains your account info and, in some cases, some of your personal contacts and device info. In theory you should be able to take any cell phone and enter any active SIM card and be able to use the device with the service provider and phone number associated with the card. That said, our good friends at the telephone companies have made things a little more difficult than that. Some service providers have worked with phone manufacturers to create phones to sell with their service contracts that do not even use SIM cards. The user and service provider data is hard coded into the phone. In this case, your device is physically locked to the service provider from whom you purchased the device. With higher end phones, such as an iPhone, which are purchased through a data service provider, these devices almost always have SIM cards, but are usually locked to the service provider. For example, my Bell Canada iPhone has a SIM card which I can swap with a friend (who is also on Bell), and the phone works fine on his plan with his number. If I inserted a Rogers SIM card, the phone will not work. Just another technique to make you stay with your service provider or pay ridiculous fees when travelling abroad. My advice to anyone who travels a lot or plans to travel a lot, and is buying a new iPhone, would be to fork out the extra cash and buy it directly from the company. This way the device is unlocked. You can therefore put a SIM from any service provider into the device. This has the advantage of not tying yourself into a contract within your own country. Pricing and service quality can change all of the time these days. When you lock yourself into a provider for 2 or 3 years in order to save a few hundred on a phone, you are no longer flexible to go where the deals are. You are tied to your contract or have to pay some sort of penalty to get out. If you do happen to have a locked mobile and you want to grab a SIM in another country, you can either buy a new device to be used for travel, or you can unlock your current device. Depending on the device, there are several ways this can be achieved. I recommend that you research this for your specific device. Here is an excerpt from Canadian Media Wire on the topic of legalities regarding unlocking or jailbreaking an iPhone: "jailbreaking" Apple's iPhone allows it to run unauthorized applications and operate on unauthorized networks. Available at JailbreakMe.com, the code reportedly works with all Apple devices running iOS 4 and iOS 4.01, including the iPad. The U.S. Copyright Office last week ruled that jailbreaking of iPhones, among other circumventions of security technology, is not illegal — although Apple maintains that jailbreaking an iPhone still voids its warranty."

Now before you plan on using a SIM in a foreign country, you must do some more research. When I travelled to the UK and Australia, there were many options for SIM cards and pay-as-you-go data and voice plans. For the most part, the quality was great and the plans were very affordable. When I went to Brazil, I could only get voice and text. I was unable to get data, which was almost useless to me since I am more an email person than a phone person. Before you travel, google the SIM card / pay-as-you-go situation for that country. You will want to compare the prices which should be easily found on their websites. In order to get an idea of how much data you will use, just dig up your last couple of phone bills and use that as a guide. In addition to considering price and data / voice / text packages, you must also research the quality of the network. If you have an iPhone or any other 3G phone, you want to be sure that you are going to have 3G service in the areas you are travelling. I have some friends that landed in Canada a few months ago and got Rogers SIMs for a trip to Cape Breton, but it turns out Rogers is the only service provider here that does not provide 3G in this area, so these guys had to use the ancient and super slow EDGE network for their entire trip. You don't want that to happen to you. Once you have chosen a provider, the next step will be to find out where you can get a SIM card. Sometimes they sell them in the airport, which is convenient, but often you need to find a service provider's store in a nearby mall. Once you get the card, install it, and get it up and running, recharging your credit is usually fairly straightforward. Most companies allow you to do it by credit card over the phone, or you can buy recharge codes at most newsstands and corner stores. You will get more information on this from the agent who sells you the SIM.

Once you land and have your SIM card working in your new, or unlocked phone, you will now have a local number in the country you are travelling. This can have additional advantages since people you are working with in the territory can now call you without incurring long distance charges. The next challenge is communicating with the folks back home. In some cases inbound calls are free. This means that you can give out your foreign phone number to friends, family and co-workers back home, and they can call you at any time without using up your pre-purchased credit. If you are using an iPhone, Android, or other smartphone, you will have access to VOIP applications and services. VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) allows you to use your internet data plan to make phone calls. Doing this usually means huge long distance savings. Some popular VOIP services are Vonage and Skype. My recommendation is Skype. The most recent mobile version of Skype allows for VOIP calls over wifi or 3G, though there will be some extra charges for this attributed to your Skype account (it even works on the EDGE network, but the quality is crap). Skype is free for calls between Skype users. If you want to have the ability to call telephone numbers with Skype, you either have to buy credits or a plan from Skype. Skype's prices are far better than any long distance charges that I have ever seen. Before you leave, setup a Skype account. If there are people that you plan to talk to often while on the road, encourage them to set up Skype accounts and leave their Skype open. Setup a plan or buy Skype credits before you leave so you are all set. Install the Skype app and give it a test run before you take off. This way you will only have to worry about getting your data plan sorted once you arrive in the foreign territory. Once that is set up you will be good to start making calls.

So in summary, here are the things that you need to do before you leave home to ensure that you will be connected while touring and travelling abroad:

1. Call your service provider and see what sort of packages they offer for the territory you plan to travel.

2. If your service provider does not have a reasonable package in that territory, check and see if your current mobile device is suitable to be used on another network. Does it have a removable SIM? If so, have the device unlocked. If not, you will need to buy a new device. For some people, doing the unlock is a pain in the ass and they just end up going out and buying a new device anyway.

3. Setup your Skype account and purchase a plan or credits if you want to call phones from Skype.

4. If you are using a prepaid SIM plan in the country you are travelling, research the plans and services in that territory.

Presto! You should now be able to keep up with everything while abroad. If you have any questions or comments, please email me at darren@marcatodigital.com. Thanks for reading!