Updated 2010-Sep-05
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).
| Data rate | Technology |
| Up to 171Kbps (theoretical) | General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) |
| Up to 384Kbps (theoretical) | Enhanced Data GSM Environment (EDGE) |
| Up to 1Mbps (theoretical) | 3rd generation GSM (3GSM or simply 3G) |
| Up to 14Mbps (theoretical) | High Speed Data Packet Access (HSDPA) or 3.5G |
Cut to the chase: what’s easiest and best today?
For the least amount of hassle and a decent data rate, use GPRS/EDGE. All US GSM carriers support it; all GSM world phones support it. It’ll get you a data transmission speed that is comparable to or better than a dial-up modem in the wired world. You don’t need to do anything different with your phone while in Europe, nor dial any special numbers. 3G is the second best choice, as coverage is worse, but getting better all the time. Your phone will automatically switch to EDGE or GPRS coverage outside of 3G data areas.
You’ll note that the basic wireless data rates are not particularly fast, and they’re not cheap either — you pay per megabyte. For digital photographers with JPEG larger than 500K, or multi-megabyte RAW files, you can’t send many at 100kbps. In this situation, never underestimate the enormous bandwidth and cost-effectiveness of a FedEx or DHL envelope with DVD or small hard disk drive inside it — forget about your mobile. But if you do want to know more about mobile phone data options, read on.
Beware mobile data roaming rates
Mobile data roaming rates can be extremely expensive, so beware. When you leave your home network, your costs change. 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.
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.
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.
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.
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
- Cables
- Bluetooth
- 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.
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
