Verizon has a $10/day “travel pass” program that lets you use your U.S. plan minutes and data in most European countries. With both my old iPhone 6 Plus and now my iPhone 7 Plus, this has proved to result in 3G service in both London and Paris, so it isn’t practical for much besides text messaging and maps.
The situation in Russia is better from a technical point of view: you get LTE data rates. It is worse from a contract point of view, however. There is a $40/month option for which you must sign up explicitly in advance. This provides only 100 minutes of voice and 100 MB of mobile data. Public WiFi is fairly common in Moscow, but sometimes you need a Russian cell phone number to activate it.
Facebook is a huge background cellular data hog, so consider deleting it from your phone altogether. I went into the “cellular” settings and shut off access to cellular data for most apps except Uber (a great service in Moscow, though the Metro and buses will get you almost anywhere), Google Maps, and Phone (iMessage uses this one? There is no separate Messages app control). I also turned off the big “Background App Refresh” switch under “General” settings. (Facebook ended up displaying some alerts, which I don’t see how it could have generated unless it was somehow still able to access cellular data.) Maybe if Apple stops concentrating on its Social Justice War it can develop a decent user interface to settings, e.g., a “minimize cellular data” wizard that asks what you really need to accomplish with the device.
The iPhone disagrees with Verizon regarding the quantity of data used. Verizon sent a text message regarding a $25 additional charge for another 100 MB data block when the phone showed only 88 MB having been used (I was careful to reset this when getting off the plane in Moscow). So I paid $65 for a week of limited usage in Moscow. My Russian friend said that he is paying $8/month for a comprehensive voice, text, and LTE data plan. So one week of roaming cost as much as eight months of domestic service. How do we get in on this business?
Well, you could buy Verizon stock I suppose? (You could also look at getting a prepaid SIM card, especially if your phone is double-SIM.)
The mobile data business is like an extreme version of pharma. You make a big upfront investment, then squeeze the customers for something that incrementally costs you nothing to provide. There already seems to be special deals here and there where Facebook traffic does not count against your data allotment, etc.
Once we get enough capacity not to care, this will seem like an era that cared about ridiculous things.
In the civilized world you just buy a sim card at a kiosk and stick it in your GSM phone. Dunno why anyone would bother setting up roaming with a US carrier.
Tom: the iPhone 7 is not double SIM as far as I know.
Bobby: Certainly it would have been nice to have unlimited data for $8, but once a different sim is in there how do I get text messages and phone calls? iMessage would reroute automatically based on my Apple ID? But regular text messages to my U.S. number? I could set up my U.S. phone number to forward calls to the new Russian number? (but wouldn’t I need to be roaming in the first place in order to tell VZ to forward my calls?) But what if I call or text someone in the U.S. from my phone with the local sim? They see that it is a call from an unknown number in Russia? And they answer it because they want to ask a Russian why he/she did not buy Americans a better president?
We whose time is no longer billable just change the SIM and inform a few intimates of our new status. I can live without my entire social graph for a few days.
If you make your google voice number your universal number, than you would get all text messages through google hangouts, and dialing through google hangouts would allow your caller id to stay unchanged, even though data is supplied through local SIM and/or wifi.
However google voice/hangouts does not seem to have good support for international SMS messages, and MSM support might not work nationally either.
The more palatable solution is using project fi, which gives you a flat rate of $20 for phone + text, and $10/GB for data. This works worldwide (100+ countries) for data, if calling outside google hangouts, international (locan when abroad) calling is a little extra. A nice bonus feature, is that you can get extra data only SIMs that work internationally for $10/GB. The drawback is that domestic connectivity is through T-mobile and Sprint, no Verizon option.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Fi
Look at T-Mobile.
> But regular text messages to my U.S. number? I could set up my U.S. phone number to forward calls to the new Russian number?
I think this is how that handful of guys behind WhatsApp became billionaires. You can even run WhatsApp on a crappy Symbian phone in Africa, change sim cards every month, and still get all your messages.
Another option is to get a small portable wifi hotspot (“mifi”), put a local sim in that and then tether it to your phone. Data comes from that but everything else goes off your standard roaming.
Also gives you the benefit of a local number if you need it for whatever reason (most have a web ui where you can check sms at least)
Consumer Cellular. Painless. Transparent.
Have you not heard of “What’s App” for unlimited, wi fi texting…for free. For a small fee the Mo+ app lets you make calls via wi fi.
“What’s App” actually is nicer than the regular iphone texting. The one problem is that everyone you’re texting must have the app.
But it works great.
Iranian don’t need visa for traveling to Russia, this has motivated so many Iranian citizens for a visit to Russia. Iranians love shopping, this is a very good opportunity for Russia business. Visa free rule has made so many Iranian travel agencies in Iran to start organizing tours from Tehran to Moscow and Saint Petersburg. Iran is a historical country as well as Russia. Russian restaurants have been open recently in Iran Tehran, this would direct Iranian tourists to visits Russian restaurants even more on their trips. This was maybe done because of the conflict between Russia and US.