"Holy cow" international roaming

Immediately apologize for some banal truths, and many have long known "discoveries": as the experience (including your own), sometimes the most obvious things are not obvious. In particular, even for employees of subscriber services - to say nothing about us, ordinary subscriber?

Internetwork roaming - a truly great invention of mankind, the main reason for the worldwide popularity of GSM and the concept, turning over all ... Stop-stop, do not pathos. In fact, everything is extremely simple: we want you to make and receive calls anywhere in the world, GSM standard provides such an opportunity, and operators around the world with its willingness to provide. In a very extra fee, of course. For the operator international roaming - truly the goose that lays golden eggs. Sadly feel a chicken, sometimes have nowhere to go: talk need / want, and hotel rates for long-distance relationship is not much more humane than roaming rates. However, it is not necessary to pay too much - just a little bit of optimism, curiosity and a healthy desire to save money.

This multifaceted ...

International roaming today - not just "global mobility" phone number from your network. There are still roaming "card" (usually IP) operators, pleasing thousands of Russian tourists the possibility to use abroad purchased in Moscow at the Kursk station card IP-telephony. One of my friends all the elbows themselves bitten after a trip to Spain: a neighbor to the number called to Moscow for $ 0.33/minuta and the quality of communication did not complain. But the IP-telephony - a separate issue and we return to it. Unless, of course, Eldar allow J. As for roaming in mobile networks, it is becoming increasingly important GPRS-roaming in GSM-space. You are reading this article, therefore, the choice is made, and to agitate you for internet / email / MMS / mobi-chat in your pocket is not necessary. Remained one small thing: "persuade" in the GPRS-roaming some conservative operators (we will not point fingers) and wait for a reasonable price for "smart" phones.

Educational program for beginners

Immediately and amicably forgot about all the "posekundki" - real, imaginary and Dotsentnye. None of the roaming and not yet in sight, all rounded up to the minute - guess yourself in any direction. And other benefits / discounts either, "on-net" calls are those in roaming are not. As there is (usually) and protection intervals: so if someone got the wrong number trying to call a plumber, Speak boldly, or at least ask about the weather at home - pay per minute still have. "Favorite" numbers are also no longer recognized as such, and favorite SMS will become even more expensive: roughly 15 cents for each letter (translit half the price). Not without tricks: for example, in Ukraine for the subscribers of Beeline calls are much cheaper in Kyivstar network, but the outgoing SMS and a half times cheaper than in the UMC. Incoming SMS messages are usually free, are absolutely not a sin to use it. But more about that shortly. By the way, do not forget to check the phone number SMS-center, as some older facilities operate only within a home network. A year ago, 90% of the calls home were much cheaper than outside, but now all mixed up and you need to carefully study the rates before you travel. Conditional Call Forwarding - pet feeder operator, the most decent, even Subscriber hint at the potential "hit on the money" with the familiar voice mail. You can consult the subscription service, but it's easier not to bother and refuse to divert all or put an unconditional call forwarding all calls to voice mail.By the way, not bad numbers in the phone book written in the international format (7095 ...) - it is easier to make and extra hassle in the future will not be. Finally, if the money in the account is clearly coming to an end, and update your account can not make sense to try to call himself - account for outgoing calls from the guest network will come in two weeks. Real balance "fly" in a deep disadvantage, but by the time the inevitable lock the phone you're already at home and have time to put money into the account.

The second statement is not self-indulgence and severe necessity.

The financial aspect for Russian tourists do not always stood in last place. Want to pay the extra dollar and a half per minute? On health - from the rich whims. Gone are the days when traveling abroad are held hostage by a subscriber's favorite operator. Today paid "in full" only lazy, good stiff competition in the mobile market forces operators to go with a fairly lucrative offers. 15-20 minutes study of roaming tariffs in the Internet immediately show "who is who» in the country where you have gathered. Nobody prevents to connect to another operator and travel time to divert all incoming calls to a new phone number - callers will not notice the "substitution". Particularly single-minded can advise on a trip to play operators: a single SIM-card in the phone constantly to keep and use for incoming and the other - to stick in the phone when you call home. For such cases, especially good SIM-card with multiple stitched GSM-accounts, but it is the subject of a separate discussion. Say that the halfpenny savings is not worth the hassle? The math together at my example: the megaphone for a week vacation in Turkey (where he was finishing this article) The total talk time was 35 minutes, including 31 minutes of calls to me from Moscow and 4 minutes - my calls to the Moscow numbers. Plus about 14 MB of GPRS-traffic. Invoice amount - about $ 26. All the same in the Beeline would cost me about 80 "with tail" of dollars for the "voice" plus 60-80 dollars for data traffic. Why is "60-80" rather than an exact figure? Soon before this "little tricks"'ll get - "Stay with us" (c). MTS, unfortunately, do not see - they do not have GPRS-roaming services. Let's hope that at least for the next summer season will be. It is clear that the savings in other countries and with different operators will probably be less (thanks to Elephant for free GPRS in Turkey), but still a game worth the candle.

Mobile messaging - all of his take with us

Surprisingly, to maintain contact with the usual range of Internet communications is feasible and abroad, and carry a pawn shop last «Orion» do not have to. The most austere version - e-mail to SMS - works on virtually any mobile phone. Connect service, put on the mail server forward to the special address, and use. All letters are encoded in accordance with your settings (Cyrillic or transliterated) and sent to your phone as SMS. Bilaynovsky version of the service is able to stick together long letters to several SMS-messages, passing the phone to 860 characters in the Cyrillic alphabet or before 1530 (!) - Translit. Default-setting - about 200/400 (Russian / transliteration respectively), but the fine tuning of parameters allows us to obtain just such seemingly unrealistically high (Thanks spices suggestive nickname Lurker). Surprisingly, the intelligent service excellent short shrift to all the Russian e-mail encoding and delivers readable text, even in cases where the mail client smartphone demonstrates some "krakozyabry. In the area of ​​the federal network, such e-mail/SMS hybrids can even reply via SMS (the answer will be delivered by e-mail sender), but the relationship is obtained abroad, one-sided. Similar services are introduced or introduce other operators: for example, the happy owners of SIM-cards "MTS-Info can also be read via SMS my emails. True, the fun turns do not come cheap: viewing of each message (or part of a long letter) "paid" a separate request from the sim-menu. Subscribers to other networks similar service is available in "alternative" service providers - if there is demand for the service holy place is never empty.

To carry a laptop all the trips - the inheritance of real enthusiasts, although I saw a laptop on the beach.Handheld computers in these conditions is much more practical, smart - just logical. All these devices share one thing: the presence of a full-fledged e-mail client. In the presence of GPRS-roaming services are no problems, apart from financial woes. GPRS-«oats" abroad is not cheap, but crafty operator's billing makes it even more expensive and significantly. So relax while roaming is not necessary - the usual home settings may fail. A simple model: a smartphone or PDA is configured to automatically check the mailbox every 30 minutes, in the absence of mail volume sent / received data is well within the free guard interval. Grace! Transfer the model of abroad: for example, a megabyte cost - about $ 6, the guard interval is practically no tarifitsiruemy minimum amount of data - 100 KB. In these circumstances, we will pay every day for $ 30 just for the belief that today we have no one wrote. So down with automatic roaming - is too expensive fee for convenience.

Dodgy «GPRS-session"

Let's look at the recommended settings of the phone operator: timeout with no activity (data transmission) we are advised to install in 5 minutes. Similar "umolchalnye" parameters laid down in the factory settings of many phones. In practice this means that with thoughtful study Iternet pages, sitting in the forums, etc. our stay in the network artificially divided up into many short sessions, each of which is that? Correct: charged separately and rounded! Minimum tarifitsiruemy interval determined by technical features / useful (eg, home network Beeline - 1 cent), but in other people's networks are often talking about the greed of the unit operator (up to $ 0.6/100 kb). One of the most effective ways of dealing with this ugliness - setting long timeouts in the phone manually. If necessary, a "session" can be stopped by force, although not normally required - incoming / outgoing calls to GSM networks are taking place with the active GPRS-connection (if it is at the moment the call is not being actively downloading the file). Unfortunately, setting the duration of the timeout in the phone does not always help, because the network switching equipment can artificially break up a session at the session, especially when moving between your phone base stations.

Pictures

Internet on the beach is much more interesting traditional "Snap"

Week holiday in Turkey through the eyes of the counter GPRS-traffic

The site operators are not very suited for viewing the status of the balance from your mobile device: a half-dozen right words and numbers, followed by a demonstration of the nineteen (!) Pictures and logos.However, downloading graphics can be disabled.

Fads zoom page: "Status Line - Active, current"

When TV and newspapers in Turkish language, see the weather forecast turns out to be possible only on the phone screen