Geocaching Australia

From today's Melbourne Herald Sun...
A VICTORIAN man's overseas holiday resulted in a $54,500 phone bill - more than his annual income.
The Telstra customer was caught in a global roaming fee trap that claims thousands of victims across carriers each year.

For anyone heading over the ditch or anywhere else, make sure you turn off data roaming on your phone before you board the plane in Oz.

Yes, yes. I know this has been hinted at in other postings but I don't think any figures have been mentioned. I did read the full article in the printed version of the paper but I'm too stingy to pay the online subscription to download the full version for you to read here.

The article did say Telstra (and all the other carriers have similar costs) have agreed to cut the bill to around $7k as a "good will measure". The phone owner was using his phone for mapping and facebook posts over a three week period.

I checked with my provider before I left for the States to see what the costs were and whether or not there was a plan we could get and their suggestion was to buy a sim card for a few dollars when we get there and put credit on it because otherwise we would end up with a bill of around $50,000!! for what I would use it for. And all I wanted it for was facebook so I could let family know where we were. That's expensive facebooking.

The iphone has a setting to switch it off, but I use a SIM from the country visiting. Most phone companies will have a deal for international visitors.

In NZ, when you arrive at the airport purchase a NZ Vodaphone SIM card ( In Auckland its in the duty free area). Last trip I spent about $30AUD calling Australia and burning 200MB in data in a 11 day visit.

In the US I used T Mobile, though the data charges are quite expensive as it for USA for any 3G data.

In South Africa I will use Vodacom.

Just a matter of googling and finding the deals.

GhostGums wrote:In NZ, when you arrive at the airport purchase a NZ Vodaphone SIM card ( In Auckland its in the duty free area).

For geocachers, I'd recommend avoiding Vodafone and getting a Telecom prepay card instead. Sure Voda is convenient in the airports, but if coverage is important, Telecom will give you much more than Voda will. If you come in to Christchurch airport for the Mega, the nearest malls with Telecom stores are probably Northlands (10 min from airport) and Riccarton (15-20 min from airport).

I've been on VodaNZ with my previous business for the past 9 years or so, and was really disappointed with their coverage outside of CBDs. Really enjoying the better coverage that Telecom provides.

I don't believe the prepay prices are very different between the two. Unfortunately we don't have the great VodaAU prepay packs that I pick up every time I go to Aussie that provide gobs of data (along with poorer coverage compared to Telstra)

I found pre-paid iPad SIM cards VERY expensive in relation to Australian prices. Free wireless in major cities is like it was here in Australia about 5 years ago... scarce.

Pre-paid is definitely more expensive in NZ than Australia - one of the benefits of a larger market I guess. I think you'll find quite a bit more free wireless than previously. Do what I do in Australia - go grab a coffee at McCafe and make use of the free Macca's wifi

I can barely get the Macca's free wifi to open my email account, let alone anything else

I was looking today as I probably have a 2 night trip to Wellington coming up for work, and TelecomNZ allows you to order a SIM online but they will only ship to a NZ address. Annoying. So it might well be a case of buy one the first day there (or the 2nd day depending on your flight arrival time).

For those with an Optus phone, it appears if you received it as part of the plan they will unlock it for nothing, so that's a plus. Also the E180 dongle I use for the laptop appears to be easily unlocked online for nothing.

We use Telstra in Aus, and had already decided to go with a prepay Telecom when we land in Christchurch.

Plan of attack, collect baggage, collect hire car, collect prepaid sim at Telecom and sleep after an allnighter from Perth.

Then cache silly for 3 weeks.... Bring it on.

I was in NZ for the World Cup and a spot of geocaching. I thoroughly recommend 2 degrees.

The National Data packs will give you 3G data across most of the country http://www.2degreesmobile.co.nz/prepay/ ... ional-data

Their coverage isn't as good as NZ Telecom, but it was adequate for my time in Auckland and Hamilton.

BTW - Be aware of the frequency your phone uses. I have an HTC Wildfire S and it couldn't use NZ Telecom's network.

With the NZ holiday only 10 weeks away now I am getting back into this.
If you have a Telstra phone can you actually put another SIM into it, pre-paid or not? I had a different Telstra phone I was given (HTC Wildfire) which wouldn't accept an Optus SIM (actually it worked for calls and SMS but not internet). I bought a pre-paid Telstra SIM just for geocaching help while I kept the Nokia going. Now I've got a Telstra Samsung Galaxy S2 I imagine that if I put any NZ card in it I'm not going to get any internet access.

So has anyone experience with this?

Years ago this wouldn't have mattered but we've all become so used to having email and info access on the road that it's hard to go without it. Then there's opportunistic geocaching which is what I really love about a smartphone. Not having to put all those caches into the Garmin on the off chance you'll be in the right area. When we went to Canada three years ago that's all I could do - pick my targets beforehand and download them. With only half the family being into caching it's difficult to plan on doing many!

Is the phone locked? Sometimes (I think most of the time) the phone is locked to a particular network by the provided. When I got the iphone there was an additional lock put on by apple. Might be worth checking.

Once they have been removed I have had no trouble using other SIM including vodaophone in NZ.

Yurt wrote:With the NZ holiday only 10 weeks away now I am getting back into this.
If you have a Telstra phone can you actually put another SIM into it, pre-paid or not? I had a different Telstra phone I was given (HTC Wildfire) which wouldn't accept an Optus SIM (actually it worked for calls and SMS but not internet). I bought a pre-paid Telstra SIM just for geocaching help while I kept the Nokia going. Now I've got a Telstra Samsung Galaxy S2 I imagine that if I put any NZ card in it I'm not going to get any internet access.

I think I said this in another thread: you may need to set up the correct APNs for the network you are on in the Mobile Networks settings on the phone.
They are kind of like the SSID on a wifi network, you can't connect to a telstra APN off a Optus network for example, you need to put in the Optus APN names, you can find these on the internet.

Just need to be a bit careful about frequencies and phone capability.

Vodafone NZ uses 900MHz in the regional areas, which is the same frequency as Optus and Vodafone in Australia
Telecom NZ uses 850Mhz, same as Telstra in Australia.

If your phone doesn't have the capability for the frequency of the carrier then there's no point buying a local SIM from that carrier. You need to match the frequency... or get another phone.

(Kiwis please correct me if I'm wrong about the frequencies of the carriers)...

Be very careful folks. A work collegue recently spent 5 days in Christchurch and has a $1600 bill for data charges.
Turn off those iphone apps.