Cheat On Your Cellphone Service With Tep Wireless

by Melanie Renzulli on

If you are a smartphone user and love to travel, this has probably happened to you: you return from a trip abroad to find your cellphone service provider has piled on hundreds of dollars for roaming charges and data usage. No matter that you purchased an international plan or topped up with extra data before you left. You’re now faced with a huge bill and a growing ulcer from the stress of it all.

Some elect for a workaround, getting an unlocked phone and performing the old SIM-card switcheroo when traveling overseas – but that’s not especially convenient. What is convenient is a Tep pocket Wi-Fi, a personal hotspot that lets you cheat on your cellphone service with pay-by-the-day Wi-Fi.

Here’s how it works:First, you book your service with Tep, providing information on where you are traveling, dates of travel and a delivery address. Tep will deliver your device to either your home address or to your hotel.

Second, your device arrives, complete with charging equipment, a small tag indicating the name of the Wi-Fi network and its password, and a postage-paid return pouch. Just locate the network on your phone or laptop – the hotspot signal is strong enough for use with about five devices – enter the password, and you’re ready to go.

Finally, when your trip is done, simply pack up the Tep equipment in the mailing pouch and pop it in the mail.

During a recent test drive of Tep’s Wi-Fi hotspot, the thing I found most difficult was printing out a return label and sending it back. Tep pays postage on the pouch but emails the return label, leaving it to customers to remember to print out return labels before embarking on trips. That’s not so convenient.

On the bright side, I got excellent connectivity on three devices simultaneously, including an older model iPhone that is Wi-Fi only.

If you are heading to the London Olympics or to any of 38 European countries this summer, Tep is offering rates starting at $5 per day for a 30-day plan (3G data) to $9.99 per day for a five-day plan (500 MB data). Customers can pay an additional $6.95 per day for unlimited data.

This plan will allow you to fly, drive or take the train across the continent without losing connectivity. If you’re traveling to London, Tep has partnered with Heathrow Airport and Paddington Station to enable pick-up of its devices at designated terminals.

While Tep is designed for travelers visiting Europe or the United Kingdom, it also works in the United States, which means that you could ostensibly use it as an option when traveling domestically.

I’m heading to Maine soon and I wish I would have known about Tep before I shelled out the extra fees for a cabin equipped with Wi-Fi. Ideally, I’d unplug all together. But let’s save that discussion for another article.

Ubiquisys Attocell could enable roaming-free international cellphone calls

by Dana Murph on

Femtocells aren’t new. For the past few years, they have trickled out onto Verizon Wireless, AT&T and Sprint using various names, and while they’re perfect for those who have subpar cellphone coverage in their own home, they aren’t great for avid travelers dealing with international roaming. If you’re unfamiliar with the technology, it works as such: a femtocell is a miniature cell tower, of sorts, which connects to your home broadband Internet connection. This basically creates a cell tower in your home, and it routes your calls out through the Internet instead of via the nearest “real” tower.

Unfortunately, all of the US carriers have locked their femtocells to work only in America, and even when you change locations domestically, most require you to update your address in your online profile before it can work elsewhere. There’s a GPS beacon attached to all of them, which works as the ball-and-chain for travelers. The ultimate femtocell would be the one that you could take anywhere, and plug into any Internet connection, in order to have five bars of local cell service anywhere in the world. It would all but eliminate roaming fees while you were chatting in your overseas office or hotel room. But wouldn’t it be even nicer if you could take that idea, and make it mobile? That’s exactly what Ubiquisys is doing with its newest product, the Attocell. Read on for more details.This USB dongle is considered a “personal femtocell,” cramming the technology that’s usually found in a router-sized box into a single USB adapter. The setup couldn’t be simpler: plug the Attocell into a laptop that has an Internet connection (for example, this would work through a laptop out in a French coffee shop with Wi-Fi freely available), and then use the connection it creates to make a phone call via the web. It’s sort of like Skype, except you’re using your actual phone number, which is far more convenient.

The company hasn’t coughed up pricing or availability details yet, but should do so next month with a formal unveiling at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. We’re told that a number of carrier talks are already in progress, but we have to worry about what fees (if any) will be tacked on. The ultimate goal would be to buy this adapter and then use it without limits for free, but it’s unclear if the carriers involved would let that fly. If they charge too much, it will end up simpler to just make a call while roaming, but we’re crossing our fingers that it won’t go down like that. This could very well be the answer to a lot of prayers from those who travel overseas routinely and have to swallow massive roaming bills each time they return.

[Via Engadget]

Yearly reminder: turn off International data roaming when heading abroad

by Scott Carmichael on

It has been a few years since we last reminded you to pay close attention to your international data usage when you head abroad. And now smartphones are more popular than ever, the time has come to remind you again.

Unless you make specific arrangements with your mobile operator by adding a data roaming package, you will be charged as much as $21 per megabyte of data when abroad. This means you could very easily end up with a $2000 bill for a couple of days of email. The only way to prevent these charges is to disable data on your phone.

Even if you stop checking email and surfing the web, your phone could be doing all kinds of data intensive tasks in the background. Simply forgetting to disable a news or RSS application could cost you $1000 in a week. Every year, people return from their vacation only to be welcomed by a phone bill delivered in a box. Need an example? How about a week in Cancun with an $11.667 Sprint phone bill?

Before you leave:

  • Call your operator and ask whether they have an unlimited or bundled data plan for international usage
  • Always note the name of the customer service rep, along with the time and data
  • Call back before you leave to verify any requested changes were made
  • If you do not want to do data roaming, ask for it to be turned off in your account
  • Turn off data roaming on your phone before you leave the country
  • On some phones, you can alter the “data access point name”, which also blocks all data
  • Consider investing in a prepaid SIM card with data when you are abroad in need of data
  • Keep online activities limited to WiFi when possible

With these simple steps, you should be able to enjoy your trip, without your phone blowing through the budget for your next trip.

[Photo credit; Flickr/Me and the Sysop]

Excellent “stay connected abroad” article from our friends at Engadget

by Scott Carmichael on

Engadget (and Gadling) writer Darren Murph has posted an excellent overview of your options on how to stay connected when you travel. In the article, you learn about the differences between CDMA and GSM, how Google Voice and Skype can help when you travel, and just how insanely expensive international mobile data is.

Consider the article a “must read” if you plan to travel abroad and hope to be just as connected as you are back home.

Next week, we’ll have our own overview here on Gadling – but with a strong emphasis on how to pick the best travel smartphone. With so many new phones hitting stores this summer, being able to pick the one that will actually work when you are abroad is a must. In the meantime, head on over to Engadget for the article.