What to avoid when travelling with your mobile phone
(July 2009)

There are many costs and charges that we can incur while using our mobiles overseas – much of the time we do not make ourselves aware of these charges, and are then surprised to find a rather large mobile phone bill when we get home. To make sure a huge phone bill doesn’t pay you a visit after your next trip, here are a few things to watch out for the next time you take your mobile abroad.

Avoid your voicemail

Something to avoid while travelling with your mobile phone is your voicemail service. Whether your phone is on or off, if someone calls and leaves a message, you will be charged the overseas rate for receiving the call – this can be anywhere up to £1 per minute depending on your location. And of course, you will be charged again for calling to retrieve the message.

Many travellers are caught out by these charges, even after they return home. When your phone is switched on in a foreign country, it registers with the overseas network. Switch your phone off and return home with it switched off and your phone believes it is still on the overseas network.

So any voicemail messages you receive on your switched-off phone once you’ve returned home will be charged at the overseas rate too. The easiest way to avoid these costs is to have your voicemail service switched off before you trip - your network can arrange this for you.

Alternatively you can just make sure to answer all of your calls. It will be cheaper for you to take the call, provided it is a short one, than for you to miss the call, be charged for receiving the voicemail, and then be charged for retrieving the voicemail message later.

If you need your voicemail service while abroad, you should re-record your own personal voicemail message before your trip, letting others know that you will be abroad, and to keep their messages as brief as possible.

Avoid travelling without researching your options

There are a variety of ways to save on mobile phone costs while you are on holiday – from phonecards, to international SIMs, to internet phone services. Taking your mobile on holiday with your standard phone package could result in the highest possible phone costs. At the very least you should always check with your existing service provider as to what discounted international services they offer. You’re sure to find a package that offers you far cheaper calls and texts than your existing one (check Vodafone’s online shop to find a good deal on a mobile).

Avoid connecting to the wrong network

One final thing to look out for when you take your phone abroad is that you have connected to the correct network. Usually when you turn your phone on in a foreign country, your phone will automatically locate the network with the strongest signal and connect to it – although this may not be the cheapest network for you. Some mobile phone service providers charge more for using certain networks and less for others.

So before you travel you need to make sure that you know which network you need to connect to in order to get the cheapest calls from your provider. Then when you arrive, you can manually select the network you want to use using your mobile phone handset.