Interesting People mailing list archives
iPhone's international GPRS charges
From: "David Farber" <dave () farber net>
Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2007 14:17:10 -0700
Aside from a brief coment that this is an old problem that Apple shuld have known about, they at least fixed it djf -----Original Message----- From: brett walker [mailto:freakscene () mminternet com] Sent: Sat 10/20/2007 5:12 PM To: David Farber Subject: Re: [IP] iPhone's international GPRS charges hi Dave, My wife had the same problem when she went on a business trip to China. She was hit with a $900 charge for the same reason. She found out that AT&T does have an iPhone-specific data roaming plan, but you're still paying through the nose for it, and it's limited to I believe 25MB per month. However, since then Apple released iPhone Software Update 1.1.1. It has a new feature in the settings menu which allows the user to turn off all data transmissions. This basically solves Jeff's (and our) complaint. Apple should be brought to task when it does something wrong, but also given credit when it fixes problems. -brett David Farber wrote:
An old problem with cell phones and the very very high international roaming rates (actually a BIG ripoff) djf -----Original Message----- From: Jeff Kirk [mailto:jeffkirk () gmail com] Sent: Sat 10/20/2007 11:37 AM To: David Farber Subject: iPhone's international GPRS charges Dave, I know you've posted umpteen (fully deserved) rants about the iPhone, but I'm not sure whether you've discussed the issue of outrageous GPRS data charges while traveling abroad. I've gone on several extended foreign trips lately, and I've taken my iPhone for emergency use, in case a member of my family needed to reach me; I left it on most of the time. I used it for exactly one voice call while abroad, lasting 90 seconds. I didn't use it at all to access the Internet or check e-mail except in wi-fi hotspots, and I set my e-mail function so that downloads occur manually at my instigation, not every 15 minutes. And yet I've now been charged a total of $700 for international GPRS use over the past three months. Why? As I was told by the (surprisingly helpful) AT&T rep I just spoke to, the iPhone is programmed to periodically auto-access the Internet for ALL of its functions, not just e-mail and Safari browsing. Weather forecasts get updated. YouTube playlists are refreshed. Stock prices are kept up-to-date. Even the built-in iPod somehow needs the Internet to function, perhaps to check for new iTunes purchases. When this occurs outside of a wi-fi zone, it's done over a partner carrier's data network. It is impossible to turn off iPhone data access while traveling abroad, and international data isn't included, of course, in AT&T's unlimited-data iPhone plans. The rep nicely erased all of the int'l data charges off my bill, but this is a HUGE oversight (one of many, I know) in the design of the phone. Suffice it to say I'm switching in the future to a plain-old quad-mode phone for international use. -jk ------------------------------------------- Archives: http://v2.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now RSS Feed: http://v2.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/ Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
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