Let us paint a new scene for you to get you into the groove of what you’re going to be living on your next trip. You’ve walked out of a restaurant in the center of Rome after having your first true taste of an original Italian pizza. The meal came with some delicious vino, and you’re strolling, a little happier than usual, towards the fontana di trevi. You grab your phone, and you want to record the whole entire thing for an Instagram live audience of 5. Sorry to burst the bubble, but a lot of the video apps and things like live streams are going to take up a bunch of data! For people who’re accustomed to having an unlimited plan at home it can be hard to keep track of how much data you’re actually using.
This introduction is one of the only ways that we felt we could explain the dilemma that you’ll have when using your phone on an international SIM card. It’s not just the fact that you may not have unlimited data to use on your trip. When it comes to making calls to landlines those may be deactivated. If you bought a SIM card that does offer minutes to make calls those calls are not going to be coming out of your regular number. Unless you have a dual SIM phone and both of them are active. In which case, you’re getting charged roaming fees, so why did you get the SIM card in the first place? As you can see now, there’s no short answer to seemingly a simple question. Let’s dive into the variables that you could come across.
You May Not Have Unlimited Data
This may be the one thing that you’re going to have to account for that will in turn change the way that you use your phone while you’re abroad. Can you get an international SIM card that offers you unlimited data? Sure that could be a possibility for you if you want to make sure that you can keep using your phone as you normally would. The only problem with that is, you’re going to be adding maybe 50 to 100 dollars if not more to your travel budget. Is it worth it just to be able to stream what you’re doing or watch your favorite shows while you’re out on the street abroad? For most people, we get the sense that the answer is going to be no.
Not having unlimited data while you’re abroad may not be the worst thing in the world. Unless like, we mentioned you’re looking to stream your entire trip through social media. If that’s not the case, just the fact that you’re abroad probably will mean that you’ll have less time to spend watching shows or videos on your phone. For a lot of people this idea of having to take their eyes off their phone can be a bit scary. If you pick the right travel destination though it may be easier to remove yourself from your phone than you think. Keeping track of your data usage while abroad is a good way to make sure you’re not overpaying for the service.
Is It Safe To Use Local Wi-Fi When Possible?
We’ve talked about this on the site before. One of the things that we advise against is using a public Wi-Fi network within the city center. Public Wi-Fi within airports would fall under the same category. We just recently got back from a trip and the reality is that we had to use the Wi-Fi at the Madrid Barajas airport because it was the best way to contact people back home to make sure they knew everything was ok. The other options would’ve been to wait for like 2 hours after the flight to find the open store where we could buy a local SIM card or to use roaming data from our local plan. At that point the risk we were taking seemed ok.
The problem with some of these risks is that you could make the gamble and be perfectly fine. In fact, there’s a good chance that the majority of the people that use for example airport Wi-Fi are perfectly fine doing so. What you may want to avoid while on these networks is checking your banking apps and things like that. Making any type of online payment while on these apps is also not recommended. If you want to use these networks and feel a bit safer in doing so your best bet may be to use VPN service. That way you’ll at least have an added layer of protection when using public Wi-Fi networks.
Your Phone Number May Not Be Active
This is one of the main things that you want to account for. A lot of times what is recommended when you are getting coverage through a local SIM is that you deactivate the regular SIM card that you use in your country. This is done to ensure that there will be no possibility of incurring in roaming charges. That means though that if you get a call directly to your regular number that call is not going to be coming through. There are ways that you’re going to be able to get around this issue. If you get an international SIM card that does offer minutes as part of the package you can let your important contacts know that you’ll be changing phone numbers for the duration of your trip.
Another thing that you can potentially do is make calls through apps like WhatsApp or FaceTime. I’m going to be covering this option in depth a bit later in the article. WhatsApp for example is now basically unfazed when you change your number. You’re still going to have the same contacts if you keep the app active within your phone. Now, you do want to make sure that you track the amount of data that you’re using if you’re going to be making too many calls through these apps. Nothing is necessarily 100% free, so you want to keep that in mind at all times with data usage.
Dual-SIM Phones Can Make The Process Easier
With a dual-SIM phone you’re not going to have to worry about removing the SIM card that you have regularly installed in your phone. If you’re getting an eSIM the process is even easier because you just have to install the new eSIM into your phone, and you’re going to be ok. With multiple SIM card slots though all that you would need to do is insert the local SIM card in an empty slot. Then you need to go to your settings and make sure that the local SIM card is the one active. Like we said in the previous paragraph you may want to make sure that your regular SIM card is inactive throughout the duration of your trip.
What can happen if you don’t make sure that your regular SIM card is inactive is that it will at some point start looking for a signal. You could end up paying for roaming fees even if you didn’t even realize that your regular SIM card was looking for coverage or that you used it for that matter. The good thing about this Dual-SIM phone situation is that if you were to need to look for coverage to see if you got texts in your regular number, or you wanted to receive a phone call in that number you could just activate for a short while. For the most part though, you’re going to want to make sure that your regular SIM card is not transmitting any data.
WhatsApp & Other Apps Should Work Fine
There used to be an issue with earlier versions of WhatsApp. Since the account used to be fully tied with your number when you changed numbers through a SIM card it could mess your whole app up. These days the transition was not even felt at all. On our last trip overseas, all that we did was get a new SIM card that was local to Spain, and we were able to use WhatsApp right where we left off. In the sense that there was no change in our previous conversations, everything was just there. What does happen is that the app sends a notification particularly to your group chats to let them know that you are using a new number, but you’re the same account.
You could still see some issues if you don’t have your regular SIM card inserted in the phone or if you were to change your email apps to a new account. What that would be telling WhatsApp is that the person that is now using the device not only has a new number, but has updated other account details. Therefore, they must not be the same person. If you don’t delete the app or anything like that you should be able to transition with the new number without any issues. The same thing goes for things like FaceTime or other apps that you could be using. Especially the ones that are tied to your email account. If you don’t change your email account those are going to be fine.
Can You Use Your Phone As You Normally Would With An International SIM Card In It?
We just wanted to have a conclusion to this article to say some of the key points that we feel you should take away from this. If you pay enough money you’re going to be able to use your phone pretty much just as you would locally. With an unlimited prepaid SIM card for one month you could do anything that you want. Just keep in mind that in most countries these options are not going to come cheap. Perhaps the one thing that you won’t be able to do regardless of what SIM card you buy is to make landline calls with your regular number. You’re either going to have another number or you’re going to have a data only plan.
If you have a data only plan you’re going to have to only use apps to communicate with other people. That’s not a big deal for people who already use apps to do just that. It could be a problem though for folks who usually use regular SMS text messages to get in touch with others. If you use a local SIM card that’s the part of your communications that are going to be most affected. For people who are worried about this they may want to check out some of our other articles that talk about how you can communicate with other people through apps. That way you can find some normality in your communications while you’re abroad.