How to keep in touch on a long trip?

[colin5353]

On a recent trip to the US, I used my Viber via wifi and bought a T-Mobile local sim, and used that in my Galaxy Note. Mostly for access to maps and finding local things to do etc.

 

[drewbles]

From my experience of reading posts on here I would be sending Drewbles a PM.

She already has i'm helping her out with some SIM cards

If inbound calls are important, the roaming SIM i'm providing offers a 1800 number for people here to call you at no cost to them. Outbound is a little moot though.

The AT&T SIM is $60/month unlimited calling and text, with 2 gig of high speed data (well, for AT&T it's called that but it's not overly fast in the USA). Text messages to AU numbers are included in this unlimited, but people replying will pay international SMS rates. Of course if you're sending a message to an iPhone, it'll use iMessage so that's just data allowance, and won't cost you or anyone replying in reality.

For voicemail, depending on your provider, setup a paging service. I use the Telstra service (Message Bank Memo) where someone answers (with a message i've defined) and the message is emailed to me. Optus, Voda and Telstra all offer this, although it can be tough to find people with a knowledge of it. Most have a subscription free offer, where you pay per message, or you can pay a monthly fee and it reduces the per-message cost down.

If you're dead-set on regular voicemail, the providers also can give you a number to call and login to. Speak to your provider to get the number. When you dial in, you enter your phone number, your voicemail PIN, and listen to it. You can then just dial out from the USA to an AU number to listen to your voicemails (perhaps after putting your AU SIM into your phone to await an SMS saying you have voicemail, so lower call costs).

 

[QF029]

My home phone is a VOIP service (Nodephone) which sends voicemails as a .wav file to your email. At the airport I forward my mobile to this number which means I get the emailed voice message from anyone calling home or mobile. It has the added advantage that you can use a VOIP app on iPhone or Android to make local calls in Australia over wifi from anywhere in the world for minimal cost.

 

[AndyGoodyear]

I am going away to the USA for a month and have a solution - although it relies on you having a TPG home phone/internet service at home.

My TPG account comes with a home phoneline that I do not use. For $10 per month with TPG you get unlimited international calls to both mobile and home phone numbers.

1. I have set up my voicemail on my Optus service to ring me when I have a voicemail rather than me having to dial the voicemail number. I have been using this in Australia this way for a long time.
2. I will be diverting all calls from my Aussie mobile phone number (Optus) to my TPG landline number. Any costs will come out of my call allowance in the cap which I won't be using anyway.
3. I am then diverting all calls received to my TPG landline number to an overseas AT&T mobile number, which I will purchase while I am there. I have checked with TPG and the diverted calls to the USA are still included in the 'free international calls to mobiles'.
4. That's it! Then I can carry just the one telephone and have calls from both the people dialing my USA and my Aussie number to the same phone, including the calls from my voicemail.

Sounds complex but rather easy to set up and will cost me virtually nothing.

 

[A.Butts]

Hi all, great subject as I'm off to the states in Jan13 for 6 months and this had me concerned. Now I feel well equipped in the knowledge to know how, where and when to set up my communications to / from Aussie, Thanks all.

 

[AndyGoodyear]

Or if the above will not suit - as someone has said you can simply dial into your voicemail. If you dial your own telephone (this works on Optus) - then when your voicemail answers simply enter * followed by your pin number, followed by # and it will access your voicemail menu.

 

[Princess Fiona]

Hi all, great subject as I'm off to the states in Jan13 for 6 months and this had me concerned. Now I feel well equipped in the knowledge to know how, where and when to set up my communications to / from Aussie, Thanks all.

I couldn't agree more
Great info being provided !
Although I travel frequently it's never usually longer than two or three weeks away and I was starting to feel a little bit nervous that it would all be too hard to sort out for a long trip.

 

[Pushka]

When i go O/S I change my voicemail message to say 'Don't leave a message - send me a txt or email instead', then I just leave it on 'do not disturb' (an iOS phone). It really shows who listens to the message, BTW.

Yes. This is what I do. Texts are very good value.