cell phone for international travel

I've a choice of getting Verizon "international" service at 10/day or getting a cheap phone and getting a sim card when I land in NZ.  Thoughts?

It depends on whether or not you need to receive phone calls.  Also the $10 only applies if you use either data or voice on that day.   I usually just leave my phone in airplane mode but turn on WiFi when I travel international and try to do most things on WiFi which is pretty much ubiquitous in a country like NZ.  Only if I truly need to make a call or truly need to access data over a cell phone network do I take the phone off of airplane mode and then you take a $10 charge and you can use it as much as you want during the 24 hour period from when you first  turned off airplane mode.  I'd rather have that and have access to all of my stuff whenever I need it.  Often when I get home from a trip I've only had $10 or $20 worth of charges doing it this way because, as I said, there's WiFi everywhere.  If your phone and plan supports WiFi calling, ATT does even if you are in a different country, you can even make calls without a charge, or you can use Facetime or Skype voice only calls if bandwidth is a problem as it often is in public places.  So in my opinion, the whole getting a local SIM card or local burner is a thing of the past with these adhoc $10 a day when you need it plans coupled with WiFi almost everywhere.  A long answer, hope it helps, from someone that is out of the country on average 90 days a year on 6 to 10 overseas trips...

E.J. I did what you suggest with a photo tour in Japan, relying on emails saying to call, and then calling using skype. Same in Iceland. Since I will be traveling alone rather than on a tour, I may need to make local calls (cab, reservations, auto club, hopefully not 911, etc) more than calling home. Is that going to be an issue?

At least in the states Verizon works as you suggest with wifi. I was in the Bighorns Mts. last winter staying at Burgess junction when my phone rang. There is no cell service there. I forgot about Verizon connecting with wifi when cell service unavailable. What a shock and delightful discovery. P.S. their wifi there is very very slow to non existent (not enough satellite band width when a lot of people connecting) and it still worked.

I don't know how Verizon does it so you will have to check but ATT lets you do international WiFi calling without an additional charge. If I remember right, Verizon may not allow that and keep that service for domestic use only, you will have to check with them. If you just start using your phone in the normal way you would in the US, it will cost you $10 everyday you do that.

Thanks for your help. I've been stewing over this for a week. Verizon says that they do not charge for wifi calls from foreign countries. We'll see when I get the bill.

Wildflower-nut wrote:Thanks for your help.  I've been stewing over this for a week.  Verizon says that they do not charge for wifi calls from foreign countries.  We'll see when I get the bill.

They probably had to do that to be competitive with AT&T which has always positioned itself as the phone you need to have if you do a lot of international travel to various countries.  Verizon and Sprint use a different type of network that is not compatible in every country and therefore Verizon has gotten a pretty poor reputation for capability once you leave the USA due to using an older network standard that much of the rest of the world does not use but your phone may still have the capability.  Within the USA they are great.  So one last thing to check is to insure that your phone can handle the type of phone network they use in NZ.  AT&T (& new T-mobile) phones are the only ones that work in every country on earth.  From my quick internet search it seams that it may not work but check with them because the info I found is 3 years or more old.

There are various map apps that can operate with data that you download while you've got wifi, further reducing the need for cellular. I was quite happy using maps.me while walking around Athens.

StephenFitzpatrick wrote:There are various map apps that can operate with data that you download while you've got wifi, further reducing the need for cellular. I was quite happy using maps.me while walking around Athens.

Yes, maps.me is the one I use.  No cell phone connection or even WiFi connection needed once you DL the map for the area you will be in.