Best global roaming deals for iPhone travellers

In the last few weeks, as the hand of Steve Jobs reached down and the iPhone 3G descended from the heavens to these wide brown lands, all the attention was on which carrier had the best value data plans. The winner of that bout turned out to be Optus. (See our full analysis of the Best Australian iPhone plans here.)

But little if any attention has been paid to the global data roaming rates, which are charged separately to your iPhone plan rather than coming out of your existing data allocation. And unlike most previous mobile phones, the internet features on the iPhone 3G are actually very useful when you’re travelling.

For example, Google Maps with turn by turn directions is a Godsend for finding your way around an unfamiliar city, as is general Web searching for both business and fun-time activities, shooting and sending simple holiday snaps. Plus we’re seeing some great travel-centric apps on the App Store such as Local Picks from Tripadvisor that use the GPS functionality in your iPhone to tell you the best restaurants and tourist attractions nearby to your current location.

Unfortunately, unless you’ve paid to get your iPhone unlocked you won’t be able to simply swap out your Aussie SIM card and drop in a card from a local carrier with excellent data (and voice) rates. You’ll be stuck with the international roaming deals of your home-base carrier.

We dug up the iPhone data roaming charges for Telstra, Optus and Vodafone in order to find the Australian iPhone carrier for frequent flyers. (We haven't covered Three as it does not currently sell the iPhone.) But be warned: even the best deal is still expensive enough that you should think twice about using your iPhone overseas for anything other than phone calls and SMS messages.

Telstra

The cost of roaming with your Next G iPhone (which will jump onto any available 3G network around the world) is $15/MB, based on Telstra’s standard roaming charge of 1.5c/KB. There’s also a 50c ‘flag fall’ for each data session.

With that in mind, we’re trying to determine if the iPhone actually shuts down all Net connections once you back out of an app into the main menu, or if it keeps a connection alive in the background.

If the former applies, then you could face a lot of 50c data session fees as each new app opens a data connection. This could end up similar to the ouch factor experienced by roaming BlackBerry users when their device quickly and silently polls for ISP email every 15 minutes, resulting in an effective charge $2 per hour, 24 hours a day, just for checking for email.

Optus

While the rack rate is $20/MB (based on the published rate of 2c/KB), you can trim this to $15/MB if you specifically select one of Optus’ partner networks in the Bridge Alliance mobile roaming network. Members include major league carriers in NZ (Vodafone), the UK (Orange and T-Mobile) and the US (T-Mobile) plus ten Asian countries such as Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Indonesia, South Korea,Thailand and India.

Optus has also recently introduced flat-rate Bridge Data Plans that can be used on any Bridge Alliance member network. $40 per month gets you 15MB of data, with $80 for 40MB and an excess usage surcharge of $15/MB. The latter plan is definitely worth taking if you're going to one of the member countries -- $80 is cheap in global roaming terms, and 40MB would be enough for light usage of your iPhone for a week or two.

Vodafone

Vodafone has been aggressive in lowering local and international data costs, even if its local iPhone plans don’t set your pulse racing. Standard data roaming costs $10/MB (1c/KB) so already you’re ahead of Optus’ best standard price.

But if you sign up for your iPhone under one of Vodafone’s MyBusiness Cap contracts, you can buy one of the carrier’s excellent roaming data bundles in advance of each trip, which gives you 25MB for $49 or 120MB for $99 on the networks of 38 countries. That works out to be equivalent to $2/MB and $1.20/MB, respectively.

These are the same bulk data deals offered to Vodafone’s mobile broadband customers, and there’s no contract involved: you just buy each plan as you need it. The data allocation is valid for one month, but we think that even on a one-week jaunt you could easily gobble up 25MB or even 120MB of data. The excess usage fee is $8/MB.

However, we suggest you keep an eye on your iPhone’s data meter because Vodafone readily admits that its online MyBill service isn’t the most accurate measure of data roaming. “It’s worth remembering that we rely on our international partners to provide us with relevant data to calculate overseas usage” points out the Web site. “Because this can take a while to get to us, accurate readings can sometimes lag by 2 to 3 days.”

The connection speed varies between countries, of course, depending on the local network. 19 of Vodafone’s partner countries offer some flavour of HSDPA, four are restricted to plain vanilla 3G while 16 still meander along at GPRS speeds, which will certainly help you keep your usage down, since it will come in at tortoise speeds.

While the MyBusiness plans cost exactly the same as the personal cap contracts, with the same data and voice allowances and upfront iPhone charges, they also deliver a few extras that the personal contracts lack. These include half-price calls between Vodafone numbers (17.5c per 30 seconds instead of 35-40c) and if you group between two and four iPhone connections onto a single account you get unlimited free calls between those numbers within Australia. This could almost be worth having a couple or a family set themselves up as a business, considering registering for an ABN is free!

Of course, you have to judge Vodafone’s cheaper roaming data prices against its more expensive Australian plans. It’ll come down to which countries you visit (do they have 3G?), how often you visit them and how long you stay. But on a roaming basis, there’s no contest.