How do international roaming charges work for data?

Life Technology
1

I’m trying to figure out how much it’s going to cost me if I occasionally turn on my iPhone and use international roaming for data in Canada.

I think I’ve found the right page in this with Chunghwa Telecom: https://www.cht.com.tw/home/cht/service/roamingfinder

That page says it’s NT$0.04/1KB for data; so, for example, if I foolishly had my podcast app download a 60MB episode, that’d be 60,000KB, or - crap - NT$2400. Do I have that right?

What I’d do is turn off cellular for almost all of my apps, except a couple that I may need for navigation, and then turn on cellular data - but I’m not sure how much data that would require. But I’m also unsure what I’d be charged if I suddenly got text messages or calls (even if I didn’t answer them).

Are there any traps out there I should be careful of? My hope is to always use wifi anyway, but once in a while that may be unavailable. If I do turn on the cellular connection, I want to keep the charges as low as possible.

2

I don’t know the rate they charge. When I went to California for 10 days, i called CHT and they put me on a 30 day cheaper rate roaming tariff. my Bill was about 7000 NTD and is normally only 1300 ish. Very high charge if you leave roaming on too long .

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3

Don’t know about usage rate. But it won’t be cheap. I heard they recently had some travel specials.

My friend roams with Chunghua and it’s around $1100 per day with unlimited data. Maybe cheaper recently. But they need it for business.

I buy a travel SIM and usually around $1500 for around 5 or 6Gb 30 days extendable.

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4

Firstly, please excuse my tech ignorance. Normally I travel internationally shorter than 2 weeks and I get Taiwan Mobile’s international roaming package. However, this time I’ll be in the US for about 24 days. Tawan Mobile packages seem quite expensive for that length of time.

I should be able to just go to a cell phone store like T-Mobile and get a sim card to use while I’m in the US, right? Would there be any problem because my phone is from Taiwan? It’s a Vivo model (made in China) that uses Android.

5

I always order an eSIM from Shopee for the destination country. Has worked flawlessly for Japan and Europe. And quite cheap (less than NT$500 for 5GB for one month in Europe).

Not sure if those SIM cards are available for the US, too - but I would assume so.

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6

Thanks. I’ll check it out.

7

Aerobile.

I love it and use it in America and North America and Europe and other places I travel.

It’s cheap and the best thing is it’s already turned on as soon as you land. So can talk to people via communication apps while waiting in immigration and baggage pickup.

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