Abroad for 3 months - How do I minimise my bill?

[Anonymous]

Hi,

I'm going to be spending 3 months in the USA.

At the moment, I have an iPhone 4S and I'm paying £31.00 a month + £6.00 for the 'All Rounder' bolt on for iPhone.

The only feature of my iPhone that I would like to use for these 3 months is the wifi connection.

I've been hoping that you can connect to a wifi network on an iPhone 4S anywhere in the world - regardless of the contract - for free. Is this the case?

If that is the case, then it seems likely that I would be able to save money by downgrading/cancelling my current bolt on?

Would be grateful for any relevant information.

Thanks in advance!

[Bambino · Accepted solution]

You can cancel the bolt-on, but you will still have to pay your monthly contract. No way around that. You can connect to any wifi network while you're there for free. Your best bet, if you're going to be in the US for 3 months is to get a PAYG sim from a network in the US. You can get one from T-Mobile, but you'll have to wait until you're there. There are also international sims that you can buy if you Google it. 

Make sure your phone is unlocked before you go.

[Anonymous]

As already mentioned remove your data bolton. If your contract is more than 50% of the way through you should be able to drop your tariff 1 level also (prob from £31-£26). You can always change it back when you return.

You can normally get iPhones unlocked in a couple of days... but you will need access to iTunes to complete the process. Request the unlatching now, and if you know anybody who has a different companies Micro-SIM pop it in and connect to iTunes before you go to check that you can download/change carrier settings. That way if you're at a phone store in the states they should be able to pop their pay and go SIM in there and get the correct settings on.

[perksie]

---

@Anonymous wrote:
've been hoping that you can connect to a wifi network on an iPhone 4S anywhere in the world - regardless of the contract - for free. Is this the case?

---

Yes it is, just check they are encrypted if you are needing to log in to any accounts.

Some places do charge, you need to check, but mostly it's free.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for quick and thorough responses, everybody.

Getting my phone unlocked seems to be a pretty good idea.

As for the Bolt On cancellation, I'm a little unsure.

Upon clicking the 'Swap' button in the 'My tariff & Bolt Ons' section of 'My O2', I'm presented with the options shown in the screenshot below:

As you can see, with 'iPhone' selected in the dropdown menu, I can only reduce the cost by £3.00 per month as there is no option to remove the Bolt On entirely.

However, by selecting 'Standard Phone' in the dropdown menu, my options are different:

As you can see, I'm now able to completely remove the Bolt On. My SIM will not be in a 'Standard Phone', but does that matter? The warning notification in red text suggests that it's fine to do this (albeit at the cost of zero data allowance). Am I 'allowed' to do this?! Seems like a silly question and an obvious answer, but better to be safe than sorry.

Thanks again.

[adamtemp64]

JUst remove before you go will have no affect on phone functions except visual voice mail will not work and you will have to change the apn's if you want mms to work.

On return change to iphone and the data size you want reset network settings and all iphone functions like vvm will work again