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traveling. Even be er, these plans can
be activated and deactivated instantly.
TURNOFF DATA ROAMING
AND TWEAK YOUR SETTINGS
With or without a data plan, make sure
to switch off your phone’s auto-sync
(Android) or push (iOS) email se ings and
disable data roaming before you leave, to
avoid any surprises on your phone bill
when you get back home. Because inter-
national plans have data limits, I turn on
data roaming only when I need it. And if
I absolutely have to check my webmail, I
do it via the website on my smartphone’s
browser rather than the built-in email
client—I use much less data that way.
FINDAHOT SPOT
Most smartphones let you flip on the
Wi-Fi when they’re in airplane mode (and
yours should be, if you don’t want to get
charged just for hearing your phone ring),
which means you’ll get online access via
hot spot. This is crucial for bandwidth-
hogging activities like checking email,
streaming video and making calls with
Skype. To ensure access to as many
hot spots as possible, I have subscrip-
tions to Boingo Wireless ($8 per month,
boingowireless.com) and FON ($49 one-
time charge, fon.com). These services
give me access to millions of paid hot
spots—many of them in airports and
hotels—across the globe for no additional
charge. And when those aren’t available, I
can always use single-serving paid Wi-Fi
hot spots or check jwire.com for free ones.
BRINGAHOT SPOTWITHYOU
If my trip is 10 days or shorter, I’ll rent a
portable MiFi device from XCom Global
(xcomglobal.com), which blasts out a
mobile-broadband Wi-Fi hot spot with
unlimited data for as li le as $15 a day in
more than 195 countries. With this ni y
gadget inmypocket andmy iPhone’sWi-Fi
turned on, I can use my smartphone as I
would at home, whether I’mstreaming the
latest episode of “Parks and Recreation”
dubbed in French or navigatingmyway to
the Apple store in Tokyo’s Ginza district.
As a bonus, the MiFi hot spot saves me
from paying hotel Wi-Fi charges, since it
can deliver 3G speeds to my laptop and
iPad simultaneously.
RENT LOCALLY
When I need friends or co-workers in, say,
London to be able to reach me easily, I’ll
rent a local SIMcard and insert it into any
quad-band unlocked GSM phone (avail-
able for as li le as $40 on cellhut.com). If
you plan to check email or use Spotify, be
sure to opt for the special prepaid supple-
mentary data plan (usually about $3 to $4
per day); otherwise, you’ll burn up all your
mobile credit inminutes. On the plus side:
Outside the U.S., incoming calls to prepaid
local mobiles are usually free.
Phones aren’t the only rental option,
either. On a recent trip to Japan, I could
have rented a local iPhone for about $80
a week, which sounded like a great deal
until I found out that the unlimited
data plan costs about $32 a day extra.
Instead, I rented a high-speed WiMax
MiFi with unlimited data for $80 a week
from rentafonejapan.com, complete with
delivery right tomy hotel the day I arrived
in Tokyo. It remains to be seen, however,
whether they plan to expand delivery—to
Kilimanjaro, for instance.
Hemispheres
tech columnist
TOM SAMILJAN
once tried the most effective way of avoiding
roaming charges: leaving his smartphone at
home. It didn’t end well.
XCom Global’s MiFi
device allows renters
to send and receive
unlimited 3G data
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APRIL 2012
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