( o _ 0 ) Dude?! International iPhoning Results in $3,000 Bill. Any thoughts on this?

Question

Wed Aug 1, 2007 8:28AM EDT

It was only going to be a matter of time before something like this happened. Someone decided to take their iPhone on a little jaunt to Europe, where he says he underwent "sporadic AT&T EDGE network usage off and on mixed with wifi when available." The bill waiting for him when he got home: three grand. (And I bet it was 40 pages long, too.)


Dave Stolte is hardly alone in the annals of absurd, accidental overseas charges, but as more and more people start traveling abroad with their iPhones, cases like this are going to become a lot more common, and fast. The iPhone is a chatty little device, constantly checking the network and calling home to the mothership, and iPhone users quickly get spoiled on its nifty data features, using them constantly to check the web, watch videos, etc. (In fairness: You do have to call AT&T first and ask for international roaming to be unlocked for this to work at all.)

Those little charges add up fast. $0.02 per kilobyte sounds pretty cheap, right? WRONG. Do the math: A 1-megabyte web page (a very common size) costs almost twenty bucks to open. 20. Dollars. Whoa. Seriously. (Thanks to Portfolio for helping out with our collective multiplication, and noting that there are various rate plans available, going down to $.005 per KB, which would still be about $5 per megabyte.)

Answer 1

Can you say disconnection?? There is no way in this world that I would pay a 3000 dollar cell phone bill. My husband nearly goes into seizures from a 150 cell phone bill.

Answer 2

yes... he's pretty much an idiot that happens to own an iPhone... had he gone overseas with any other AT&T phone and not had the international plan... he would have had the exact same phone bill...

Even with AT&T international... it still will be something like $1US - $3US per minute... it's expensive... everyone that has traveled out of the US knows this... well, everyone except this guy...