Comments on: 5 International Phone Plans for Telecommuters

By: Nathaniel Berke

Nathaniel Berke — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 22:21:08 +0000

Matt: One needs to be careful with that, though. If you're talking about using your mobile's data plan in another country, it's just another kind of roaming. Many companies charge extra for using data plans abroad, and you start racking up bills nearly as bad as if you used the normal phone option. Though I don't have any experience with this, I've heard the iPhone on AT&T is one such culprit, and many have been hit with huge bills when checking their email from their phones while traveling, thinking they wouldn't get charged. Best thing to do when traveling abroad with a mobile? Turn off everything except WiFi if you have it.

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By: Matt

Matt — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 05:17:41 +0000

if your mobile phone comes with a data plan, you can use that data plan to use VoIP or chat clients to stay in touch. Sure beats paying the telephone company for astronomical global roaming voice plans.

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By: joba

joba — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 19:35:46 +0000

great article! this info is very important for people living abroad. i too have heard of skype but sometimes connection can be a hassle. i get complaints from the other end that i sound far away so i have to be shouting sometimes when calling the U.S. (I live in South America now). I def. will give these other services a try.

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By: soultravelers3

soultravelers3 — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 20:37:13 +0000

Excellent! We are a digital nomadic family 3 years into an open ended world tour, so these issues are important to us. My daughter even takes her piano lessons across continents using skype webcams! I have heard of most of these but we almost always use Skype and must say about 95% we have good connections, often feeling like we next door, instead of continents away. Of course that bad 5% can be absolutely maddening if you really need to make a call. If internet is very slow, which it can be any where on free wifi, Skype will not work so well or at all. We use Skype for local calls and long distance. Skype is not suppose to work well on satellite but we used it our first year and it worked really well. I also had a sister who was only on dial up modem & we could talk computer to computer with dial up on one continent and satellite on the other! Webcams would drop after a few seconds, but voice worked fine. We would get a quick "live" peek and then could yabber for hours.

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By: Julie

Julie — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 18:11:25 +0000

Thanks for this list of services– I knew Vonage and Skype, but the others were new to me.

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