FlyerTalk Forums - how do you handle international data connectivity?

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Quote:

Originally Posted by PackingIt (Post 28197255)

No wifi at work. So consuming cellular data much of the time.

Aha... there's the problem. When I'm not traveling or at a client site, I'm in the home office. Pretty much everywhere I go, there is wifi and/or I just don't have the time to download much of anything besides email/news/the occasional podcast.

I think my record since having FI was 4gb of usage in a month, and that was when I was roaming in Jamaica where the hotel internet was useless.

Quote:

Originally Posted by elluke (Post 28167438)

This topic is new to me but I think I got it, after reading many threads.
I am going to South Africa for two weeks. I have an unlocked ATT iphone 6 (US).

Paying $10 a day to ATT seems ridiculous so I'm looking at the following. Correct me if I am wrong in my thinking.
1) Buy a local SIM card for calls & data. Arriving late to airport so vendors might be closed. Can I easily find a place to get a SIM in Cape Town the next day? What kind of place? Do you buy a SIM card plus a voice and data plan? How does it work?

2) If I don't need to make phone calls, buy an international hotspot device and use that for all data.

There are a lot of good things to say about traveling with a hotspot, but the one bad thing that is often forgotten is that a hotspot doesn't manage your data consumption. Many phones and tablets simply treat a hotspot as something that doesn't need to be metered or triaged. Thus, you might accidentally download a 1 gig system update or the equivalent while using a 2g PAYG SIM card.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dubai Stu (Post 28201376)

TMany phones and tablets simply treat a hotspot as something that doesn't need to be metered or triaged.

At least for recent(-ish) versions of Android you can configure this. You can set a specific wifi SID as being metered, in which case it'll be treated much like a standard cellular data connection rather than wifi when it comes to things like app updates.