Service in Australia and New Zealand

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Robert A. Fink, M. D. - 28 May 2008 21:33 GMT

We will be spending about 2 weeks in Auckland, New Zealand, and in
various places in Australia in late October/early November, 2008. We
will be traveling with our GSM cell phones (one Motorola RAZR and one
iPhone) as well as an ATT/Cingular Laptop Connect card for my laptop.

What are the options for service in Australia and New Zealand,
including use of my Laptop Connect service? My cellular phone account
is already enabled for International Service.

Many thanks,

Bob

Robert A. Fink, M. D., FACS, P. C.
Neurological Surgery
2500 Milvia Street Suite 222
Berkeley, CA 94704-2636 USA
510-849-2555

"Ex Tristitia Virtus"

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Bert Hyman - 28 May 2008 21:41 GMT

> What are the options for service in Australia and New Zealand,
> including use of my Laptop Connect service? My cellular phone
> account is already enabled for International Service.

You can find coverage maps and roaming partners of GSM providers here

http://www.gsmworld.com/roaming/gsminfo/index.shtml

Your RAZR is probably quad-band, but is your iPhone? US GSM service is
on 850/1900MHz, while Australia and NZ are mostly 900/1800, although
there's a little 850 thrown in.

I don't know what frequencies and modes your laptop card uses.

If your phones are unlocked, it's often cheaper to buy a pre-paid SIM
card for a local carrier when you get to your destination, rather than
pay your US carrier's international roaming fees. Again, I have no
idea how this applies to your laptop card.

Signature

Bert Hyman | St. Paul, MN | bert@iphouse.com

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Craig - 28 May 2008 21:59 GMT

>> What are the options for service in Australia and New Zealand,
>> including use of my Laptop Connect service? My cellular phone
[quoted text clipped - 3 lines]
>
> http://www.gsmworld.com/roaming/gsminfo/index.shtml

...

> If your phones are unlocked, it's often cheaper to buy a pre-paid SIM
> card for a local carrier when you get to your destination, rather than
> pay your US carrier's international roaming fees. Again, I have no
> idea how this applies to your laptop card.

I don't have any direct experience with Aus & NZ but I second the idea
of buying a local carrier's pre-paid sim. For local calls at least,
it'll be by far a lot cheaper than int'l roaming.

If you haven't had your phones unlocked yet, the sooner the better.
Whenever we get a new phone (from AT&T) it's the first call made to support.

fwiw,
-Craig

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Larry - 28 May 2008 21:55 GMT

> and one
> iPhone) as well as an ATT/Cingular Laptop Connect card for my laptop.

Don't forget to get on ATT's international data roaming plan so the
patients won't have to pay double for the iPhone data roaming when you get
back, Doc.

Just the damned thing checking email costs THOUSANDS overseas in a couple
of weeks, I read....

Bettery yet, just leave the iPhone at home. NZ and OZ are too pretty to
miss staring at that tiny screen....

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Dennis Ferguson - 28 May 2008 23:30 GMT

> We will be spending about 2 weeks in Auckland, New Zealand, and in
> various places in Australia in late October/early November, 2008. We
[quoted text clipped - 4 lines]
> including use of my Laptop Connect service? My cellular phone account
> is already enabled for International Service.

For data service the standard answer for AT&T is, add the appropriate
global data plan from here

http://preview.tinyurl.com/274fa5

(there's one for the laptop card and a different one for the iPhone)
just before you leave and then try to cancel the plans off before the
30 day trial is up. Note that I haven't done this, but if you can get
away with it the total cost for a month isn't that awful given the
prices for data you can end up paying when you are travelling.

For voice service, all I know about Australia and New Zealand is
that the people I know who travel both places frequently seem
to think that local prepaid service is expensive. If you don't
want to pay AT&T rates you could try a Celtrek SIM from here

http://www.celtrek.com

It comes with a US inbound number so you could keep your AT&T
phone alive by forwarding it to the Celtrek number if you wanted
to do that. If you find you don't like the service, however, you
can always stick your AT&T SIM back in the phone, cancel the
call forwarding and just use normal AT&T roaming instead.

Dennis Ferguson

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