International travel options for Lumia owners on T-Mobile and AT&T

Summer vacations are upon us, and soon new owners of the Nokia Lumia 710 and Lumia 900 are going to head out to their destinations of choice. Some of us may venture inside the US while others will go international.
It’s a pain to be on vacation without a mobile phone these days. Sometimes you need to call your hotel to get directions and other times you want to stay connected via Facebook while your abroad. What’s a Lumia owner to do?

Luckily, both T-Mobile and AT&T, the respective carriers Lumia 710 and Lumia 900 both have options for those who go international. This post will outline both carriers options for going abroad to inform you before you head out.

T-Mobile options

T-Mobile customers who own a Lumia 710 will be happy to know what their phone will work virtually anywhere as it is a tri-band GSM phone using the most popular 3G signals. T-Mobile doesn’t have any predetermined plans for International roaming where you pay a fixed cost and are allotted a certain amount of minutes, texts and megabytes of data.

Instead, you pay for what you use.

Using this page, I looked up how much I would pay if I were to travel to the UK for the Olympics. In this case, I would pay $1.49 per minute dialed and data is $15 per megabyte. The rate is the same in France. For another sample, I chose Canada and I see the price is $0.59/minute for those headed North this summer.

AT&T has plans to consider

Switching gears to AT&T, the company just made changes last week to International calling plans that are in the consumers’ favor. Starting June 1, the Data Global Add-On packages are priced as follows:

120 MB Data Global Add-on package for $30/month
300 MB Data Global Add-on package for $60/month
800 MB Data Global Add-on package for $120/month
With these plans, you must keep them for at least one month but you can cancel them when you’re done traveling internationally. The rates mentioned above are good in 130 countries.

As for calling, standard international roaming on AT&T in the UK (using the same countries for comparison) is $1.39/minute. Dialing while in France? It’ll cost you $1.39 as well and if you’re in Canada, it will cost you $0.79/minute.

For any additional details and to see more options with AT&T roaming packages, consult their site.

Plan before you go

As you can see, it will be to your benefit to do some research before you head out on vacation. I have numerous friends who have used their phone as normal while abroad and get back to see roaming bills in upwards of $200 or $300, just for a 7-10 day vacation.