I’m heading to London tomorrow for a week long business trip and will need to have access to phone, email, and internet on my Blackberry…
I’m heading to London tomorrow for a week long business trip and will need to have access to phone, email, and internet on my Blackberry Curve (I’m the Education Manager for Jive Software and will be delivering 4 days worth of training on Clearspace, our collaboration application).
Phone calls are crazy expensive internationally, with rates of $1.29 per minute in the UK.
Fortunately I spend a lot more time on email and the web then I do on the phone, and AT&T has an international data plan that’s $64.99 a month for unlimited email and internet. I’ll be able to check email, browse the web (tweet on Twitter, etc), and text home occasionally.
When you sign up for the international data plan, it drops your phone calls down to 99 cents a minute. Still not cheap, but if I have to make a business call then Jive will reimburse me.
I’ll switch back to the regular Blackberry data plan when I return home, which is only $30 a month.
I also have an Aircard for broadband internet tethering on my laptop, but the data plan for that was something like $130 – too much in my opinion, and the training facility will have high speed internet, as will my hotel.
I’ll let you know how the Blackberry holds up in London, and might post a few shots taken from it’s built-in 2 MP camera.
Any recommendations for restaurants or sites to see? I’ll have an extra day to spend in London on Saturday as my flight doesn’t leave until Sunday morning.
My first stop was in
My first stop was in Amsterdam for a 4 hour layover. I’m sitting in Murphy’s Pub in Schiphol Airport sipping a Heineken and waiting for an order of fish and chips.
It’s about 1 in the afternoon over here, which makes it 2 in the morning as far as my body’s time clock is concerned.
The Blackberry international service is working great, with email and web just as fast as in the USA. The network connection indicator at the top of my screen indicates that I’m on a GPRS network (it normally uses an EDGE network in the states).
You can also buy internet connectivity in the airport but it’s not cheap – £12 for 90 minutes (about $24).
Google Maps works great, showing my location fairly close to the airport. I might try the Blackberry GPS service if I get lost this week.
Oh, and I wrote this reply using my Blackberry Curve and the mini Opera web browser.
Wow!!!!! blackberry curve
Wow!!!!! blackberry curve has got many facilities. I really like the advance facilities provided by it. This cell phones is made in a advance technology. I would love to use it and want to experience it’s advance facilities provided by blackberry phones.
Travel Health Insurance
international data
Hey,
I just arrived in Spain for the semester and also purchased the verizon international data plan (which includes bbm, email, etc.) and at the top where it should show my service status all I see is a red SOS. My friend has the same phone and service and hers is working fine. I don’t know if it is a sim card error or something else. I have no access to phone so I haven’t been able to contact verizon international customer service. I was hoping you may have some knowledge on what the problem could be, and if it is something I can fix myself (I have tried removing the battery overnight already). I hate to be paying for an extra service that isn’t working.
Thank you