My daughter is currently in England, we called and added international calling, texting, and data to her line in anticipation of eliminating some of the headaches people mention all the time.
AT&T only has 20 Mb, 50 Mb, 100 Mb, 200 Mb, and 500 Mb international plans. The first two are $25.99 and $59.99 - you don't want to know how much the others are!
Despite trying to ensure that data access was kept to a minimum, she exceeded the 20Mb plan in two days! I immediately increased it to 50Mb, but also told her how to shut off all data on the phone.
Incidently, she has a Samsung Focus, a Windows Phone 7 device. These devices are very heavily reliant on data services, as are all new smartphones, and it's getting worse, however AT&T has been going in reverse on international data ... Let me explain.
We are Foundation account members (ie we have an FAN on our account). Up until about 1 year ago this meant there was an unpublished UNLIMITED international data plan available for $64.99 a month! This expired when AT&T adjusted their stance on unlimited data (as did many other carriers) Even though expired, the plan was still available for a while by special request, pretty much on a case by case basis, and it was really only for iPhones (which is what we had before upgrading to the Samsungs recently)
AT&T if you're reading this, I am referring to IPH_DOM_INTL_DATA_RZ plan, please look it up.
Since then, phones have become if anything MORE reliant on data than ever. AT&T has removed the only REASONABLE plan they ever had for travellers, and gone to puny offerings that make them more money.
How much? 525 times as much! That's right. Do the math.
Based on a $25 per month 2 gig data plan, extra 1 gig costs $10. Extra data in europe (England in this case) is $0.005 per KILObyte, so where I can get 1 gig for $10 in the US, it's $5,242.00 in England!!! No, I'm not kidding!
I don't really think you are actually paying that much for the priviledge of allowing your customers to use data overseas AT&T.
Any chance you plan on making some changes to this - it's not very reasonable, actually it's daylight robbery....
A heavily integrated phone like the Samsung Focus updates all your contacts' Facebook statuses every time it gets data access. By the end of the year it will also do Twitter. If you have your phone off for a while, then "accidently" turn data back on, it could EASILY use 20-30Mb just updating, oh, and don't forget mirroring all those photos to the cloud (Skydrive), and all those push notified apps, and browsing anything with IE (which by year's end will be IE9 compatible making it even more irresistable)
Come on guys, get with it, start offering something reasonable before you alienate every user who makes occasional (or regular) trips abroad. Right now it seems the only sensible way to go is to sign up with a local provider in the country you travel to, but even that has some serious issues.
By the way, don't forget, that number was $5,242.....
