You don't have to pay ridiculous roaming fees when you travel outside of the US with a phone.
There is a much better, much cheaper option to use your smartphone when you're abroad — simply buy a temporary SIM card, stick it in your phone, and get going!
One caveat: You have to make sure that your phone is "unlocked."
A bit about "unlocking"
Mobile phones used to be "locked" to a specific carrier. That means it was difficult to take your own smartphone and move it from one company, like AT&T, to another, like T-Mobile. It also meant that if you traveled overseas, you couldn't just pop a new SIM card into the slot and start using your phone. It wouldn't work.
A couple of years ago President Obama signed a law that made unlocking smartphones legal (it was previously illegal). And, as of last year, all US carriers must unlock your phone if your account is in good standing and you request it to be unlocked.
How to unlock your phone
Now that cellphone contracts are a thing of the past, it's likely that if you bought a smartphone recently then it's already unlocked. If your phone is a few years old, though, be sure to check with your carrier to make sure it's unlocked.
Verizon doesn't lock its 4g LTE devices, so if you have a new-ish smartphone from Verizon that's not on a pre-pay plan then it's probably unlocked. If you're unsure, and you don't want to get stuck somewhere with a non-functioning phone, just call Verizon or go into a Verizon store to confirm.
If you're an AT&T customer, you may have to request that AT&T unlock your phone, which you can do online. Make sure you do this a few weeks in advance in case there are any hiccups, which is what happened to me. (It took about a month for AT&T to unlock my iPhone after I requested it be unlocked.)
Sprint customers must contact Sprint Customer Care to request their devices get unlocked.
And T-Mobile customers can request to have their devices unlocked here.
Each carrier has requirements that must be met before the phone will be unlocked (usually it's related to your phone being paid in full and your account being in good standing).
The best — and least expensive —option
Your carrier probably offers an international roaming plan, but chances are it's significantly more expensive (and the data speeds could be even slower) than using a local carrier.
The only downside of getting a local SIM card is that you'll get a new phone number while using it abroad. But that's not a huge deal, because you'll be able to — and should — use chat apps like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Skype, and more, to chat with people and call them.
Plus, if you have an iPhone, and you registered to iMessage with your email address rather than your local phone number, iMessage should work normally.
My dad travels outside of the country a few times each year for work, and having a reliable, working, and not ridiculously expensive to use mobile phone has been an issue for him for years.
He uses an iPhone in the US, but for the past couple of years he's used a cheap Android phone abroad. But having two phones is a drag. It's even worse if one has a completely different operating system and you only use that phone once a week every six months. It's not only difficult to get accustomed to, but it also won't have the apps, services, and contacts, of your other phone.
And, since it's an Android phone, he wasn't able to participate in our family iMessage thread when he traveled.
But after traveling with my own unlocked iPhone over the summer, I suggested he do the same — take his iPhone 5S with him, and just buy a local SIM card once he arrived at his destination.
This morning, he and my mom called me from his iPhone. They're halfway around the world, and each of them had just paid $20 for a local SIM card and data and voice plans. They said it only took a few minutes and was super easy to do. And since they're using their iPhones, they're back to participating in the family iMessage thread.
One important note: Make sure you keep your US SIM card to prevent any headaches when you get back!
