Last updated: December 2011

To many Americans, staying in touch with a cell phone while in Europe can seem difficult and expensive. But savvy travelers know it doesn’t have to be. Having a phone while you’re there can be a major time saver and convenience. This article tells you how to stay in touch and save money.

Advanced mobile phone usage in Lucca, Italy

Why don’t US cell phones “just work” in Europe? For various reasons, the United States developed and deployed wireless technologies that were incompatible with those deployed in the Rest Of the World, which went with a standard called GSM (“Global System for Mobiles” – one of the reasons why Europeans use the term “mobile” and not “cell phone”).

This meant that for many years, the only option for US travelers to Europe was to rent a GSM phone, which was expensive and inconvenient. No one could reach you on your US cell phone number; you had the hassle and cost of receiving and returning the phone, and both handset rental and calls were astonishingly expensive.

GSM comes to America

Today, you can buy US mobile phones that use the GSM system from AT&T Wireless and T-Mobile. So why don’t these phones “just work” in Europe? Although they use GSM, they work on different radio frequencies. To function in Europe, a GSM phone must operate (at the very least) on the 1800MHz frequency; to get the best European coverage it must operate on both 900MHz and 1800MHz. And this is just for regular GSM — for 3G services, you need 2100MHz in Europe and 1900MHz in the US.

The net? Make sure you buy a phone that clearly states is can be used internationally or is called a “World Phone”. If in doubt, find out what frequencies it offers and check them. There are more and more multi-band GSM phones coming on to the market every month, so the good news is that it’s now a lot easier to find a good international phone.

What if I’m on Verizon or Sprint?

Verizon uses a system called CDMA, and Sprint uses both CDMA and another proprietary system called iDEN, originally developed for Nextel. However, Verizon in particular has figured out that it is losing a lot of nice profitable international traffic as a result, and now has phones that support both US CDMA and international GSM frequencies. Verizon calls these “Global Phones“. The line-up changes every couple of months as new phones are released, but the Blackberry: Bold 9930, Torch 9850; Motorola Droid 3, Droid 2 Global; and HTC: Droid Incredible 2,Trophy are all CDMA/GSM world phones available at the time of writing.

The most significant new Global Phone for Verizon and Sprint is the iPhone 4S, which is the first Apple iPhone that works on both CDMA and GSM networks. Verizon iPhone 4 and iPad 2 customers are out of luck — both are CDMA-only and will not work in Europe.

Verizon also offers a free GSM phone rental program for occasional travelers — if you’ve been a subscriber for a while, they will lend you a phone at no charge for a short trip (less than 21-days). Call Verizon on 800-711-8300 to find out if you qualify.

Sprint offers a flat rate $1.29 per minute overseas roaming charge for most GSM countries (i.e. those where Sprint has a roaming agreement). For Verizon subscribers, it’s a little more complicated: Verizon GSM roaming charges are different for each country, though most of Western Europe is $1.29 per minute, discounted to $0.99/min on the $4.99/month discounted international plan.

There are now also some Caribbean and Asian countries with CDMA networks — e.g. the largest Chinese cities — but it is still just a handful compared to the 250+ countries that offer GSM. GSM coverage is usually far better than CDMA in those same countries.

Cutting the cost of calling

Call charges on a European pre-paid GSM phone can be up to 80% cheaper than rental phones or roaming charges on your own account, and incoming calls are free. You visit any phone store, buy a pre-paid phone and pre-paid minutes of talk time. There are disadvantages: you can’t use your own cell phone number any more, and you will need enough local language proficiency to buy “recharge” or “Top up” cards and activate them using a telephone menu. Also, due to billing limitations, many pre-paid GSM phones will only work in the country where you purchased them. But if you are willing to put up with the extra complexity, this approach can save you a lot of money as the cost is less than a week’s rental of a GSM phone. At the end of your trip you can keep the phone for next time, recycle it, or sell it on eBay.

Clearly, a drawback of this kind of pre-paid is that you need to buy a phone you may never use again, unless you travel to Europe often. So why can’t you use your own GSM world phone for pre-paid service?

Pre-paid using your own GSM world phone

In the GSM system, your phone number and other identifying information are stored on a little chip: the Subscriber Identity Module (SIM). It’s a fingernail-sized smart card that slides into the back of your GSM phone under the battery (on most models). When you buy a European pre-paid GSM phone, it contains a “pre-paid SIM” issued by the carrier. If you already had a GSM world phone, you could go to Europe, take out the SIM from your US carrier, buy a pre-paid SIM (these can cost as little as 10 Euros) and put it in your own phone. iPhones and iPads use “Micro SIMs” that are even smaller than a regular SIM. Most SIM cards now come in a dual package –a standard-sized SIM that can be turned into a Micro-SIM by breaking off the plastic surrounding the metal contacts.

But we’re forgetting one important detail. In 99% of cases, people buy GSM phones from their carrier, such as AT&T or T-Mobile, and they want you to use the SIM that they issued. Otherwise, they will lose out on those fat international roaming minutes. Therefore, all phones sold by AT&T and T-Mobile are “network locked”. This means that only SIM cards issued by the carrier from whom you bought the phone will work. If you put a SIM from a different carrier into a network locked GSM phone, it will typically display an error message and/or only allow emergency (911 or equivalent) calls.

The goods news is that all networked locked phones can be unlocked, because locking is implemented in software. Nokia phones are unlocked using a code computed from the phone’s ID. Sony Ericsson phones need a code that is dependent on the ID and the keypad lock code, but which can only be computed by connecting the phone to a computer with a special cable.

So you have two choices: buy an unlocked GSM phone, or have your existing phone unlocked. Buying an unlocked GSM worldphone today is very easy — Amazon.com sells a wide variety of brand new unlocked phones from all major manufacturers with full US warranties. Apple will sell you an unlocked iPhone 4S. You can also find them on eBay from any number of merchants, though check to see if the phone is covered by a warranty.

There are hundreds (possibly thousands) of web sites offering phone unlocking services and equipment, and independent mobile phone stores in Europe will also do it for a small fee. Try Googling “Nokia phone unlock”, replacing Nokia with whichever company made your phone. Typical costs range from free to $20. The last time I did this a 20-minute call in Italy using a Telecom Italia Mobile pre-paid SIM was enough to break even on the cost of unlocking.

The Apple iPhone 3G, 3GS, 4 and 4S

AT&T iPhones are all world phones and work on any GSM network, but are network locked. The Verizon iPhone 4 is CDMA only and won’t work in Europe, but the Verizon iPhone 4S is dual CDMA/GSM and will work pretty much anywhere. I believe the Verizon iPhone 4S is also network locked (meaning you get a Verizon SIM) but I have not been able to verify this yet.

Help is at hand: those friendly phone unlocking services on the Internet have figured out how to unlock the iPhone and break its connection with iTunes so you can slide in a different SIM (called “jailbreaking”). Visual Voicemail won’t work on any network other than AT&T (it relies on stuff AT&T does behind the scenes), but regular voicemail works just fine. Some unlocking services also provide after-sales service: if Apple releases an iPhone software update that invalidates their unlocking, they will unlock the new software for you at no extra charge.

AT&T/Apple iPad 1 and 2

Apple AT&T 3G iPads are not network locked. They come with an AT&T micro-SIM which you can use in the US. To use elsewhere, you will need to buy a micro SIM from a local wireless carrier and swap out the AT&T micro SIM. Don’t lose it (they’re tiny) as you’ll need it when you get back to the US.

Verizon 3G iPads are CDMA-only and do not work in Europe. They can be used with WiFi connections and voice-over-IP applications like Skype.

Skype and other voice over the Internet options

With smartphones becoming more powerful and now offering downloadable applications like Skype and Google Voice, it’s possible to get free calling if you are in a reasonably good WiFi hotspot (such as your hotel). Call quality depends on the WiFi network performance and Internet connection congestion at your location. If it’s busy and everyone is Skyping, you’ll get poor quality. But when it works, it’s a great alternative.

Handy tips for a phone-stress-free European trip

• When buying a “world phone” make sure that it operates on 1800MHz frequency, and ideally on both 900 & 1800MHz at a minimum. If it does not, it won’t work outside the US.
• Before you leave, call your carrier and tell them to turn on international voice and data roaming. It’s turned off by default. Even if you bought a world-phone when you signed up for service, and/or told the nice sales or activation person that’s why you went with them. It is turned off by default as an anti-fraud measure.
• Sometimes, you cannot call US 800/888/877/866 numbers from foreign countries. So find out the non-800 number for your cell phone carrier’s customer support before you leave. That goes for any other 800 numbers you may need to call when overseas (e.g. your credit card company).
• Calling 611 or any other “short code” (in industry lingo) may also not work, so don’t rely on it. Find out the international number for customer service.
• To call internationally when outside the US, you need to know the country code of the place you’re dialing. The US country code is 1 — pretty simple. France is 33, the UK is 44… there’s a whole list.
• To call internationally from a mobile phone, enter a plus sign (+), followed by the country code, followed by the number. For example, to call 415 555 1212 from Europe, you’d dial +1 415 555 1212 on your phone. Finding the plus sign on the keypad of your phone can be hard… keep looking, it is there somewhere! You might need to hold a key down to get the plus sign.
• When calling from a non-mobile phone (e.g. a payphone or hotel phone) remember that the international access code in Europe is 00, not 011. For example, to call 415 555 1212 from a payphone in Europe, dial 00 1 415 555 1212. This convention also works on mobile phones.
• When making an international call to any European phone number that begins with a zero, omit the zero — unless you are calling Italy. For example, to call the UK number 01606 54321 from France, you’d dial +44 1606 54321. + is the international prefix, 44 is the country code, then the number with the leading zero omitted. Italy is the lone exception — if you need to call there don’t drop the leading zero.
• Enjoy your trip, and don’t forget to call home!

What about e-mail, data etc?

See part 2 of this article series, which covers mobile data services.

Links

The GSM Association:A trade association that also maintains world-wide GSM coverage maps showing all carriers and frequencies used.

Search eBay for unlocked GSM world phones

Google result for “Nokia phone unlock”

AT&T

T-Mobile

Related Posts:

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• Going mobile in Europe part 2: data services

Florence fashionistas checking email

If you read the previous article, you now know the answer to the question “why doesn’t my American cell phone just work in Europe?” and what to do about it. This article will take a look at the various data services that are on offer for Americans who want to send e-mail, surf the net or transmit digital photographs back to base while traveling in Europe or elsewhere.

There are four types of data service available in Europe that you’re likely to see (if you’re wondering why GSM is the only technology covered, read the previous article).

Cut to the chase: what’s easiest and best today?

For the least amount of hassle and a basic data rate good enough for email and twitter, use GPRS/EDGE. All US GSM carriers support it; all GSM world phones support it. You don’t need to do anything different with your phone while in Europe, nor dial any special numbers.

3G coverage has vastly improved in the past few years and in many countries it is the best choice.Your phone will automatically switch to EDGE or GPRS coverage outside of 3G data areas. However, your phone’s battery will drain approximately twice as fast when using 3G versus GPRS/EDGE. If you need to conserve battery power, downgrade the data speed.

Beware mobile data roaming rates

Mobile data roaming rates can be extremely expensive, so beware . When you leave your home network, your costs go up. There are no “unlimited data” roaming plans available from US phone companies. So even if you have an unlimited data plan in the US, you will be paying per Megabyte for data transfer outside the US. AT&T typically charges $20 per Megabyte on its standard international data roaming plan. You can also purchase discounted international data rates, but these are capped — you pay for a fixed amount, and anything over the limit is charged per megabyte.

WiFi: Increasingly the most cost-effective data option

With the broader availability of wireless Internet world-wide, WiFi is becoming the most cost-effective option. Carriers like T-Mobile have extremely good WiFi coverage in Europe, and often have roaming agreements with other WiFi “hot spot” providers. If you are a US T-Mobile customer you may already qualify for free or discounted WiFi as part of your mobile contract.

The problem with WiFi is that it isn’t truly mobile — but that’s often OK if you have a “home base” like a coffee shop or hotel where you can do your email and other data transfer each day. And with Skype on the iPhone and other mobile devices, you can also place free or cheap international phone calls over WiFi too.

3G (3GSM) data

3G stands for “3rd Generation” and represents a whole new mobile technology standard. 3G offers data rates similar to Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) — up to 1Mb/sec. 3G is now quite widely deployed in Western European countries such as the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain, as well as the Middle East. Because coverage is generally good in the major cities but not elsewhere, most 3G phones will “fall back” to GPRS/EDGE if they cannot establish a 3G data connection.

Note that there are restrictions based on the use of different frequencies in the US and Rest Of the World (ROW). 3G radio frequencies are different in the US, and so phones need to support no less than 8 different radio frequencies to get full GSM and 3GSM coverage world-wide. To keep costs down, some phones will only support 3G in the US and fall back to EDGE or GPRS elsewhere.

High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) or “3.5G”

An acronym only engineers could love to describe a 3G network with higher speed download — 3.5Mbits/sec on most networks, though theoretically capable of 14Mbits/sec. A bit flaky today, so don’t count on it.

4G LTE

Engineering geekiness beat out clarity again with the naming of 4th Generation (4G) mobile data. LTE stands for Long Term Evolution, and the explanation for this is simply too boring to repeat. Expect data rates in the double-digit megabit range. The actual rate depends on many factors, including the network, the phone, the phase of the moon, how you hold your phone (not kidding) etc. 4G coverage is very limited today, mostly to urban areas. Do not count on being able to actually get 4G speeds in a specific location unless you have been there and tried it.

Enhanced Data GSM Environment (EDGE)

Most GSM phones available in the US offer the somewhat tortuous acronym of EDGE. Offering up to 384K of bandwidth, EDGE is an add-on to GSM networks that bumps up the amount of data that the network can carry using GPRS (see below). In the US, AT&T has been turning off EDGE in congested areas in cities like San Francisco and New York so it can re-use the radio frequencies for 3G. It is not clear what the long-term plans are for EDGE given that 3G is more attractive.

General Packet Radio Service (GPRS)

GPRS theoretically offers up to 171K of bandwidth from your cell phone. In practice, the actual data rate is limited by your cell phone and/or the carrier, and may top out at 40K or thereabouts. If there isn’t a good connection between the phone and the network, speed is reduced in order avoid re-transmission of garbled data. Also, all GPRS users in the same cell contend for the available GPRS bandwidth. The carriers put an upper limit on the bandwidth that each phone can use to prevent any one person from hogging it all. If you’re sitting in a room full of people using GPRS, such as a press room at an event, you may get just 9.6Kbps even with GPRS.

There are two older standards, modem emulation and Circuit Switched Data, but they’re so slow and GPRS is now everywhere that I’ll ignore them.

Connecting your phone to a PC and Tethering

Many GSM world phones send and receive e-mail and provide a web browser. However, the problem is that the numeric keypad and small screen make it very hard to use the phone for long messages or standard web pages. For photographers, the goal is typically to stay in touch with e-mail and possibly send pictures back to base or to a client. In this case, the photographs are typically stored on a laptop.

The only problem is that some of the carriers knew your phone is terrible for surfing the web, and connecting it to your laptop breaks all their assumptions about how much bandwidth you will use. So they disable tethering, the feature that lets you connect your laptop to their network via your phone. You can fix this by unlocking your phone (see previous article) and updating its software, or buying an unlocked phone that doesn’t have this restriction.

There are at least three common ways to link laptops and PDAs to cell phones

1. Cables
2. Bluetooth
3. Adapter cards

Cables are the simplest, but can also be expensive and difficult to use. Physically tethering one device to another can be a problem when you can’t get good mobile phone reception at your laptop’s position.

Bluetooth is a wireless data standard that allows cell phone and laptop/PDA to communicate at a range of up to 10 meters (33 feet) or so. It can be more convenient than a cable, but you need a laptop that can do Bluetooth, and you need to pair up the two devices so that they’ll communicate. All of this is more complicated than simply plugging in a cable.

Adapter cards plug right into the card slot on your laptop and are like a cut-down GSM phone without voice, screen and keyboard. They even take a SIM card and appear to your PC as a “modem” and/or network adapter. This is often the simplest option for laptop users, though is more expensive than the other options.

Before you leave…

If you plan to use a GSM world phone in Europe, make sure you get data services working before you leave. In many cases, your phone comes pre-configured, but you might have to use a web-based tool from your carrier to “provision” it, or call the technical support line. Smartphone users will be fine — the phone basically can’t function without data services, so it’ll already be set up.

One important tip: for those planning to use their own phone for data in Europe, call your mobile wireless carrier before you leave and tell them to turn on “international data roaming”. You need to do this even if you have already called to tell them to turn on international (voice) roaming, as in the wireless carrier’s systems, these two services are not the same or even linked. If you merely ask your carrier to turn on “international roaming”, chances are they will turn on voice but not data. If you cannot connect to a GPRS service while in Europe even though your phone shows that data service is available, this is likely the problem.

Handy mobile data tips

• If roaming with your own phone, make sure GPRS and/or 3G works to your satisfaction before you leave
• If using your own phone, call your carrier before you leave and ask them to turn on international voice roaming and international data roaming
• Only modem emulation will let you send a fax via your phone, and not all carriers offer it as a service
• Bluetooth offers the most flexible way to connect a PDA or laptop to your phone, but make sure it works before you leave

Links

The GSM Association: trade association that also maintains world-wide GSM coverage maps for GSM data services.

Search eBay for GSM phones that support EDGE

Search eBay for GSM phones that support GPRS

AT&T

T-Mobile

Related Posts:

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• How to phone home from Europe
• Going wireless in Europe: what you need to know about cell phones
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• Siena Palio horse selection video

Florence shops lit by 220 Volt power

The trick is to look for a sticker on the power adapter or plug that tells you the input voltage. The magic words to look for are something like this: “100-240V AC 50/60Hz”. 100-240 tells you the voltage range: you need 220 volts or more for your electronics to work in Italy, France and most of mainland Europe and 240 volts for the UK. If your gadget can cope with a higher range, that’s OK too (e.g. “90-240″).  In all of these cases, you just need a simple (and cheap) adapter plug.

Here’s a video that shows you the various plug adapters and how they work:

Almost all of today’s small electronics like camera battery and cell phone chargers just need the plug adapter. Devices that use more power, like hairdryers or portable kettles, often do not work with a simple adapter. Check the label: if it says something like “120VAC” or a smaller range such as “100-130V” then you must use a power converter or transformer. This is extremely important: if you plug a standard 120V hair dryer into 220V using a plug adapter, it will immediately burn out the dryer and may cause a fire.

Transformers or power converters are rated by the amount of power they can supply, in Watts. So it might say on your hair dryer label “1000W” — that means you need a converter rated for 1000W or greater. Again, it can be dangerous to exceed the rated maximum of a power converter. The more power a converter can supply, the larger and heavier it tends to be, so beware of smaller adapters if you need a lot of power.

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• Tuscany, Umbria and the Marches photo

An extremely common question, especially for those heading to Europe for the first time, is what kind of plug adapter to use for their cameras, laptops, phones, iPads etc. In this video, I take a look at three common adapter types and show you how they work. I also show you what to look for to make sure your particular device will work on European voltages, and what kind of devices won’t work.

This really is one of those topics where literally taking a look at the converters is so much better than reading about them. Enjoy!

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We recently got back from a photo trip to Tuscany, where we got to see the July Siena Palio. This short (1 min 30 sec) video gives you a glimpse of the intense emotions of the Sienese around their favorite cultural festival. The video shows the drawing of the horses, where each one is randomly assigned to a contrade, who them parade the horse through the town on the way to their secret stable location (to make sure their rivals can’t nobble the horse!)

Related Posts:

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• Plug converters / adapters for Europe
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• How to phone home from Europe

First, a quick note for Verizon iPhone 4 / iPad 2 owners: sorry, your phone/tablet won’t work in Europe. See my other article on cellphones in Europe to understand why, and what your options are.

If you haven’t done so already, register with AT&T’s MyWireless web site so that you can make changes to your phone plan options online. Log in with your wireless number and PIN code, so that you get to the home screen for your wireless service. Look for the “Quick links” section in the top-right quadrant of the page, which will look like this:

Look for this menu

Click on “Manage features”, and you’ll get a long screen showing all your current wireless settings that don’t have to do with domestic US voice minute bundles. You can ignore most of these (i.e., leave them unchanged) and scroll down to the section titled “International Features”. It should look like this (depending on your current settings, you might have different items selected):

AT&T international options

Now, let’s walk through the settings that will ensure you hit the ground running the moment your arrive in Europe. Straight away, we’re going to ignore the section called “International Dialing – Voice” because that’s about calling overseas when you’re still in the US. So skip this section.

International voice roaming

The next section is important: “International Roaming Voice (Standard International Dialing included)“. Walking through the settings one at a time:

Select “AT&T World Traveler(SM)” – at the time of writing, it’s $5.99/month. This gives you discounted calling in Europe and many other countries. At current prices, this means 99 cents per minute for most European countries vs. $1.39/minute without it, saving you about 29%. Doing the math, break-even on this option is about 15 minutes of talking in a month. You can easily get there even if you make quick calls for tickets, reservations, coordination etc. because each call will be rounded up to the next minute. The full list of AT&T discounted international rates is here.

Note that World Traveler can be pro-rated if you don’t use it for an entire month. So if you’re just popping over to Europe for a week, you can turn the feature off when you get back and only pay for the week of World Traveler that you used.

Skip over the next few options around cruise ships, Haiti, Mexico and Canada, and down to “International Roaming – Data“.

International data roaming

There are a whole host of options here at different price points. Let’s face it, international data roaming isn’t cheap. To save you doing the math, here are the per-megabyte costs for each of the options listed in most European countries:

• 200MB for $199.99 is $1.00/MB
• 100MB for $119.99 is $1.20/MB
• 50MB for $59.99 is $1.20/MB
• 20MB for $24.99 is $1.25/MB

The “overage rate” — how much you pay if you exceed the selected amount — is $5.12/MB, so estimating accurately pays off. Personally, I find the Maps app incredibly helpful when stuck trying to navigate twisty Tuscan towns, but don’t really want to use anything else. So I go with the 20MB or 50MB options depending on trip length and complexity. You can use the MyWireless site to check on your typical data usage and predict how much you might need.

If you forgot to buy one of these options before you left, AT&T gives you one very limited shot at retroactively buying data options during your trip, or after you get back. You can back date the feature to your last billing cycle start date. You have to know when that is to see if it might save you from excessive charges. If your billing cycle start date happens to be the day before you got back from Europe and you only log in when you get back, for example, you’re out of luck.

International text messaging

Then move on to “International Messaging“. You can ignore “International Messaging LD 100″ as it’s for sending texts internationally when you’re in the US.

I recommend selecting “Global Messaging 50″ for $10, as you can send 50 text messages at $0.20 each, and $0.40 for any additional messages beyond that. Compared to a one minute call, texting is one fifth the price: you can send 5 text messages. If you are a text maniac, I’d suggest toning it down for the vacation and letting your BFFs know you’re paying for every text you send.

When you’re done selecting options, the web page should look similar to this (you might choose different data options, of course):

Your selections should look something like this

If you mess up, scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on “Reset”. If you’re done, scroll down to the bottom of the page, and click on “Next”.

Confirming your changes

The screens that follow are pretty confusing, because the system splits out each feature you’re ordering, and in some cases lets you backdate or set a future date for your changes for each feature. Read the page carefully to see which feature is being set up on each page.

Backdating (if available) is really handy if you want to retroactively add global text messaging, for example. But at the moment, we haven’t even left the US yet, so you probably want to select “Make effective/expire today” or “Future date to the next bill”.

“Future date” sounds good but is actually very limited. It only allows you to turn on your settings on the date of the next bill — which may not be near the time of your trip. “Make effective/expire today” means your changes will be complete and active on the AT&T network within the next 12-24 hours. I’d recommend you make all your changes a day or two before you leave for Europe and just make it effective that day.

One “gotcha”: some features like Global 50 text messages are pro-rated during a month if you don’t turn them on at the beginning of the billing cycle. For example, if you turn it on half way through the billing cycle you’ll only get 25 text messages during that monthly billing period. Gotta love that, eh?

When you’ve set the effective date for each feature, click on “Next”. When all dates for all features have been set, you get one final chance to review all your changes and read the small print of the services. If all is OK, click “Submit”. If not, you can cancel or go back to previous pages. If you messed up a date, click “Back” and correct it. Once submitted, AT&T will send you an email confirming your changes and you’ll be ready to stay connected as soon as you hit the ground.

On the ground in Europe

To control data usage, use the Settings app to turn data roaming on or off. Apps can still run in the background and access the network without your knowledge, so the only effective way to control network usage is Settings. Do this before you take your iPhone out of “Airplane mode” to avoid inadvertent data charges.

Turn your iPhone on after arrival and, after a few minutes of searching, it will automatically connect with one of AT&T’s roaming partner networks in the country you’re visiting. You typically get a free text message from AT&T advising you of data charges (at least I do) and maybe a text from the local network operator telling you about any features or charges.

Calls to your iPhone that are unanswered and go to voicemail will incur per-minute charges. The call actually makes it all the way to your phone in the foreign country and then is forwarded back to your voice mail number the US — hence the charges. You can avoid this by turning on “forward all calls to voicemail”, so that the call never reaches your phone in the first place (this means no-one can call you directly, but you can still listen to the voicemails they leave). The other option is simply to turn off your phone when you do not want to be reached — then the call never reaches your phone either and goes straight to voicemail.

To send all calls to voicemail, dial *#67# to see which number is used for your voicemail. Then dial *21*[number]# to forward all calls unconditionally. Then, when you want to turn this off, dial ##002# to restore default call forwarding.

When you get back

Important: log back into the MyWireless site and reverse the changes you made. No need to pay $5.99/month for discounted global roaming if you’re in the US the whole time. Do not use the backdating capability, otherwise you risk erasing the benefits you got from choosing discounts ahead of time. Only use backdating if you forgot to order something.

Enjoy your trip!

[Updated March 6, 2011 after comments pointing out errors]

Related Posts:

• Plug converters / adapters for Europe
• How to phone home from Europe
• What kind of power adapter do I need in Europe?
• Siena Palio horse selection video
• The simple five-step guide to renting a Villa in Italy or France
• Links golf travel section

Early morning sunlight rises over the patio of an Italian villa in Chianti, Tuscany, Italy

There are just five simple steps:

1) Decide if a villa vacation is for you. The pros are that you’ll have a base for a week or two that you can come back to each night. You can stay in all day, lounge by the pool or in the garden, take in the culture somewhere else, eat in or out… all up to you. The cons are that there’s no daily maid service or other hotel amenities, you are in the same place (so visiting places far from base means a longer round trip), and you have to keep the place reasonably clean and tidy. You’ll likely be doing cooking yourself if you stay in, though you can also hire a cook. Personally, I am happy to trade hotel amenities for a more relaxed and flexible vacation.

2) Pick a country and general geography — South of France, Tuscany etc — based on the kind of things you want to do and see. Get a few guidebooks to places you think you might like to go. My personal favorites are the Dorling Kindersley “Eyewitness” travel guides (DK guides), and the Rough Guides. I like the DK guides because they’re chock full of photographs so you can get a better idea of what a place is really like, and they’re also a good starting point for planning photography trips. The Rough Guides are impeccably researched with good writing on places, history, art and contemporary life, with great vignettes on the famous locals. However, although brimming with great maps to get you around, they are sparsely illustrated when it comes to photos.

3) Decide whereabouts you want to be — in relation to the places and things you want to see and do. For example, if you really want to spend your days soaking up the world’s greatest collection of renaissance art in Florence, don’t base yourself in a cute-but-remote villa in the rolling hills of Chianti 20 minutes drive from the nearest major road. Mightily obvious, perhaps, but consider this: we were enjoying a dinner of incredibly fresh pasta with a great Brunello di Montalcino wine in a small enoteca (wine bar) walking distance from our Tuscan villa. The owner was friendly and keen to share his knowledge of the local wines and the chef smiled shyly from her kitchen. Two young American ladies walked in, headed straight to the bar and asked for Martinis, which the owner couldn’t make because he only has a license to sell wine. They were fed up having found no decent shopping all day. Their base was in the middle of rural, hilly Chianti, at least an hour from the nearest Prada store. They had yet to find a bar that could make a Martini and would have been far happier in at hotel or apartment in central Florence or Rome.

The top of your own private medieval tower is great for sunbathing

4) Decide who’s in your group. Villas work better financially when you can spread the cost out across more people, and farm and country house conversions abound in Tuscany and France. This means there are plenty of villas for rent that can sleep 8, 10, 12 or more. However, you should consider carefully who will vacation with you: do you really want to spend a week or two with them in the same house? It’s tempting to add friends-of-friends to make up the numbers and keep costs down, but consider how well you know these people and whether you’ll get on. A tense atmosphere is the last thing you need on your vacation.

5) You know where you want to be and what is important to you and your fellow guests, and what size of place you need. So how to find a suitable villa? Our first villa rental was though ItalianVillas.com, subsequently purchased by the AAA and now part of AAA Travel. They are a great choice primarily because they really know their stuff: they have been to all the properties shown on their site, and you can call them and talk to someone who can tell you if a property is right for you. Secondly, they are full of good advice on the vagaries of Italian homes that are sometimes surprising. For example, you can’t turn on the heating in September just because it is cold — you must wait until after a certain date in October when the Italian government has decided it’s OK to turn on your heating (!) So put on a sweater and see if you can find wood for a fire instead. The point is to find an agency that knows its product. Avoid agencies that do not or are just “aggregating” traffic. They are not interested in whether you have a good experience — they’re after the commission (as much as 50%) and on to the next deal.

The only remaining thing to check is the villa location, as sites are often vague when it comes to the specific location (“10 minutes from Siena” doesn’t cut it). You need to know this so you won’t be stuck miles from all the things you want to see and do. In the age of GPS and Google Maps there’s no excuse anymore for vague locations. Plug the name into Google Maps and see where it is relative to roads, railways etc. Through the magic of satellite imagery, you can also avoid unpleasant surprises, such as renting a pretty villa right next to a large-scale “industrial” farm (this happened to us once, though we didn’t let it ruin our trip).

Advanced villa rental

Renting directly is a substantial cost saving to going through an agency — 40-50% less — but you need to know what to look for and what to expect. This is the value that a good agency can bring and why they’re a great idea if you’re new to villa rental or a particular area. After we had rented twice with ItalianVillas.com in Tuscany, we knew enough about what to expect to rent directly from villa owners. We found new places to stay a stone’s throw from a villa — like Vignamaggio, the place in the photo below.

Villa Vignamaggio, Tuscany

You might also consider hiring a cook. For some, this conjures images of impossibly expensive executive chefs, but in fact it can cost the same or less as an evening at a good restaurant.

In 2007 we rented with friends in Tuscany and wanted a cook to come 2-3 times a week to make dinner for all 12 of us. We have rented several times from the owners, a retired Italian executive couple, and they knew a cook who grew up in a family that owned a restaurant. She was phenomenally good, turning out four course meals of traditional, simple Tuscan cuisine with whatever was freshest and best, all for about 30 Euros a head.

She cooked on the first night when everyone was tired and cranky from a day spent crammed on planes and in security lines, which helped everyone to relax and start to enjoy the vacation. We either cooked for ourselves (not for all 12!) or ate out on the other nights, and having her come by every few days was a great way to bring everyone together throughout the trip.

So when you’re planning this year’s vacation and have re-started your heart after peeking at the Dollar/Euro exchange rate, consider villa rental. With a little planning, it can give you relaxing, fulfilling vacations that you’ll remember for a lifetime.

Flag throwers from the Eagle contrade of Siena cast shadows on the Piazza Del Campo during afternoon practice. Chianti, Tuscany, Italy.

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David Goldstein has written a full-length paper that explains the physics, but here are the key take-aways on megapixels:

• For a full-frame (35mm) SLR camera, 25 megapixels is about as good as it gets.
• For a smaller “APS” digital SLR camera, about 20% smaller than 35mm, 10 megapixels is the point of diminishing returns, and 15 megapixels is on the edge (and has noticeably more noise)
• For a pocket camera where the sensor is about 1/5th the size of 35mm, 4-5 megapixels is the point of diminishing returns, 10 megapixels is pushing it even at very wide apertures, and 12 megapixel or greater pocket cameras will take disappointingly fuzzy pictures at aperture f/2.8 or greater.

Why is this? Fundamentally, camera manufacturers have to balance increasing resolution from more megapixels with two competing forces: noise from the digital camera sensor and softness caused by lens diffraction. You’ve probably seen that photos taken at ISO 1600 on your camera are much more grainy than those taken at ISO 100 — that’s what noise looks like in your pictures. At the same time, the lens aperture (f-stop) puts an upper limit on how much detail can be resolved by the camera. Overall, more megapixels don’t automatically mean better pictures.

Noise is a result of the fundamental physics of light and the way that digital color cameras capture images. Light is made up of photons, with more photons meaning brighter light. The digital camera sensor counts the number of photons that arrive at each pixel to build the overall digital image. In a 21-megapixel 35mm digital camera such as the Canon 5D Mark II, there are about 20 photons hitting each sensor pixel in the darkest (shadow) areas of the image, assuming a perfect lens. That’s not very many, and it gets worse because of the way digital cameras deal with color. A red, green or blue lens covers each pixel so that only light of that color is detected at each pixel. Dividing 20 by 3, that’s just 6 or 7 photons arriving at each pixel.

Even with a super efficient sensor, this means there’s a lot of noise due to mis-counting of photons.  If we add more pixels to the sensor, the number of photons arriving at each pixel goes down because each pixel has to be smaller, which means more noise. That’s why adding more megapixels makes the photos more grainy, especially in shadow areas.

When it comes to image resolution, adding more megapixels helps the camera resolve more detail – up to a point. Adding more pixels reduces the pixel size on the sensor, which also increases the effects of diffraction, caused by the lens. Diffraction is a fact of life: Isaac Newton discovered that light beams spread into a circle pattern as they pass through an aperture such as the iris of a lens. Diffraction effects make pictures look “soft” and lack sharpness. Diffraction softness becomes more noticeable as sensor pixels get smaller because the diffraction circles spread over more pixels.

Newton showed that diffraction increases as the aperture gets smaller.  As the f-stop increases and the aperture of the lens gets smaller, diffraction increases. The point where diffraction starts to noticeably affect picture quality is called the diffraction limit. The diffraction limit for a 21-megapixel full-frame (35mm) sensor is f/10. This means that at f/11 or greater, the image will get softer and softer. The limit is f/8 for a 10 megapixel APS-sized sensor, and f/2.8 for a 12 megapixel pocket camera. Most pocket cameras don’t have a lens that offers that wide an aperture!

In other words, while adding megapixels initially increases camera resolution, there comes a point when it leads to noticeably softer pictures (as well as more noise). For example, in this New York Times review of a new, tiny Samsung ST80 14.2 megapixel pocket camera, the reviewer notices that “people and scenery in the background looked murky, and the photos lacked crispness”. Recall that to get a sharp picture on a pocket camera of 12 megapixels, you need f/2.8 or better aperture to avoid softness from diffraction. The ST80 has 14.2 megapixels and a maximum aperture of f/3.3, so pictures are guaranteed to be soft from diffraction – in addition to the extra noise from pixels that are so tiny you can fit 50 million of them in an area the size of your fingernail.

With today’s cameras, don’t obsess over megapixels, and stick to lower pixel counts where possible — especially with pocket cameras, where the limitation in picture quality is more likely to be the lens rather than the sensor.

Think twice about:

• Any full-frame (35mm) SLR with more than 25 megapixels
• Any APS sensor (“cropped”) SLR with more than 15 megapixels
• Any pocket camera with more than 11 megapixels

To find a camera with low megapixel count, use DPreview.com’s Camera Statistics pages. For more than 1600 cameras, DPReview lists the number of megapixels per centimeter squared (cm²) — lower is better. For example, the Canon 1D mark IV has just 3.1 megapixels per cm² as you might expect for high-end professional gear. The 5D Mark II has just 2.4 megapixels per cm². The Canon SX210 pocket camera has 50 megapixels per cm² as it’s a 14.1 megapixel pocket camera with a tiny sensor. Instead, consider the Canon S95 with a pixel density of 23 megapixels per cm² — a 10 megapixel camera.

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