How to avoid data roaming charges

If your mobile data plan allows you to wander, you could be in some heavy loads when the trip is over. Your mobile device uses the data even when you are not using the Internet. Social networks and communication applications, such as email and Facebook, connect to control messages, while phone contacts and media are synchronized in the background. You have several options to manage your use of data roaming, but they depend on your platform, device and support. Discover in this .com article how to avoid data roaming charges.

Steps to follow:

one

Turn off mobile data when roaming when possible. Some platforms allow you to turn off mobile data roaming, while others only allow you to completely disable mobile data.

Android devices usually allow you to disable data roaming from within the configuration of your device. The specific available options vary by device, carrier, and operating system version. If yours does not, you can disable 3G and 4G mobile data completely. If you do not want to manually adjust the settings, you can download an application, such as APNdroid from the Android Market to manage the data configuration for you. For € 1.79, APNdroid acts as a switch to activate the mobile data connection and completely off.
The iPhone allows you to disable mobile data while roaming within your device. You can also deactivate all mobile data on your iPhone or only the specific data of the intensive services such as IMessage.
You can disable the roaming of BlackBerry data through the configuration of your device, but the process varies considerably depending on the device. Check your user manual to get instructions for your phone model.
Windows Phone devices have data roaming turned off by default to help avoid incurring unexpected expenses abroad. You can re-enable the option in the phone settings.

two

Buy an international data plan . If you know you need to use mobile data while roaming and do not want to spend time setting up the device, the easiest solution is to contact your company and buy an international data plan for your company. Sprint, Verizon and AT & T offer all international data options that vary in price depending on your plan and device.

AT & T says that an international data package can significantly reduce the cost of data usage in more than 100 countries. Your company can also offer a plan that allows Wi-Fi to be immobilized so you can use your wireless laptop's connection to the Internet on the fly instead of mobile data connectivity.

If an international plan is out of your budget, you can contact your operator to find out if you can block roaming mobile data for the duration of your trip or in its entirety. Whether this can be done depends on your company and the type of current plan.

3

Use Wi-Fi when possible. The Wi-Fi configuration phone is completely independent of your mobile data usage. You can perform all the usual Internet actions, such as browsing the Internet, checking email and using social network applications through Wi-Fi, without incurring data charges. Even without a Wi-Fi tethering plan for your company, you can use Wi-Fi in hotels, restaurants and other public spaces that offer you to connect to the Internet.

Be aware of safety however. Evaluate the risks before starting the session in sensitive services, such as mobile banking, more than one Wi-Fi connection is not trusted. Although your relationship with your bank is encrypted, you can be a prisoner of what security experts call a "man-in-the-middle" attack, which means that someone else can go through the bank's site or even as the point. Hot Wi-Fi you want to connect, or both. These impostors can then steal your data, such as your bank information. Two ways to help mitigate this risk are controlling the site that works in the hotspot to ensure it is connecting to your Wi-Fi and you can make sure your connection is encrypted by checking that the URL in your Browser starts with HTTPS, instead of HTTP.

4

Roaming fees cut notifications, voting, synchronization and automatic actions, such as loading, states state network administrator and consultant Jesse Ruffin. Each application or service on your phone uses data. Essentially, you only want to manually connect to the Internet, as if you were using a dial-up modem. Close any instant features that you have uploaded and that your beam allowed, for example to Google +, Facebook or a backup cloud service.

5

Buy a prepaid SIM card for your use abroad. This is possibly the most complicated option, since you must have a phone that uses GSM technology, such as an AT & T or T-Mobile, and have the phone unlocked by the carrier or by third parties. You can then buy prepaid data and voice SIM cards for use abroad from companies such as Vodafone or Virgin Mobile. As of February 2012, Virgin Mobile offers 1GB of mobile Web per month for six months at a price of around € 40. If you need a special service, such as BlackBerry push email, make sure that the SIM provider is compatible before making a purchase.

6

Use applications to monitor your data usage and roaming . The iPhone has an integrated application to control the use of data. Some companies also offer their customers a downloadable application to track data usage. AT & T provides Myat & T for Android, iOS and Blackberry, while Verizon has its data usage for BlackBerry and Android Widget users.

Applications such as Onavo, free for iOS and Android, and Pro DataMan, € 1.99 as of February 2012 for iOS, will provide you with alerts about which applications are using the most data and when the data moves. The IOS version of Onavo also offers the option of data compression to help reduce the total of your data usage.