MisterEd wrote:My wife is going to Belgium & Italy for a week and I want to make sure we have TEXTING ABILITY (don't care much about voice or data) without exhorbitant fees.
She has an IPHONE 5S
If I set her up for the $30 PASSPORT PLAN that includes unlimited texting I just want to make sure we get no $$$ SURPRISES $$$. Those countries are covered per the online list. She will be in Lake Como area of Northern Italy with a stopover at the airport in BELGIUM on the way there into Milan airport.
Questions are:
Is there anything she should be looking for on her phone that will confirm she is in a "included" area so we get no surprise charges?
I assume we should TURN OFF iMessage and Cellular DATA? It seems iMessage uses CELL DATA and I know "regular" texting does not.
She's never traveled overseas before so I want to make it as easy as possible regarding her phone service while being able to retain TEXT ability.
Where she is staying there is wifi but when she is out of the residence she probably won't have wifi nor do I want to tech her how to set it up.
My plan is to turn off CELLULAR DATA and iMESSAGE before she leaves.
This is the one time I wish I was on T-Mobile because they have international texting & data & voice included in their plans.
All you need to do on an iphone is turn data roaming off. If you turn cellular data off, she will not be able to send or receive picture messages. Certainly you can turn imessage off also but as long as data roaming is off, the message app will revert to sending SMS anyway since the phone will not be able to connect to the imessage servers (unless on wifi).
There is nothing I know of to look for on the phone to verify she is in a "covered" area. As long as she is getting service (i.e. roaming on some international carrier), she is in a "covered" area.
Remember your passport plan does include 120mb of cellular data. What I've found is to avoid overages, just leave data roaming off unless you actually want to use cellular data (check email, google something, etc), then turn data roaming back off when done.