Leaving for a 10 day a trip out of the country with a dying pet left behind creates some motivation for learning how to cheaply and confidently communicate with people back home while abroad. Here’s some strategies that we learned and utilized while in Portugal to stay in touch on the cheap.
Cellular Data
The first problem we had to solve was how to economically have data at our disposal for checking email, navigating, calling Ubers, researching restaurants, all the things we take for granted at home. In the past we bit the bullet and paid for the TravelPass from Verizon. The TravelPass lets you gain access to your same data and calling plan with Verizon while abroad. At $10/day/line a TravelPass was pretty pricey. So Joe put his research skills to work on YouTube and came up with something called an eSIM.
It used to be that every cell phone had a physical SIM card in it and that little SIM card was what held your phone number. Inserting the SIM card into a phone linked your phone hardware to your phone number. Now if you buy a new cell phone it likely has an eSIM instead. An eSIM is a virtual SIM card in lieu of a physical SIM. An eSIM is basically an app installed on your phone that carries your phone number instead of that physical little card.
Here is how the magic happens. You purchase an eSIM from a carrier that is in the country that you are traveling to. You choose the plan from that local carrier and pay up front for this pre-paid eSIM. No contracts or long term commitments. The eSIM gets installed into your phone and then when you hit the ground at the country you are traveling to you turn off your normal SIM and turn on the eSIM that you purchased from the local provider. Bingo! You have a cellular plan for the country you are in.
How do you accomplish this? We downloaded an app called Airalo onto our cell phones. This app allows you to browse carriers and plans for the country you are traveling to and make a purchase of an eSIM. It then walks you through the process of installing the eSIM on your cell phone.
Since we were both getting an eSIM we chose different Portugese carriers. The idea was that if one of us didn’t have a good signal from the carrier we were using the other might. Similar to in the US where in some areas of the country Verizon has great signal and in other ATT rules. I purchased a plan from Meo and Joe purchased a Fofo plan. This did work out as we had more than one occasion where one of us had a signal in Portugal and the other did not.
Older model phones cannot support eSIMs but most phones can. So validate that your phone can handle an eSIM before making a purchase.
This does not let you use your US cell phone number for sending and receiving texts or making and receiving voice calls. You’ll have to get a little creative.
Google Voice
Most eSIMs on Airalo will not come with a local phone number for the country you are traveling to. These are just data plans, an Internet connection. If one of your goals is to communicate with someone back home, you don’t want to hand them a foreign phone number and ask them to text and call you anyway. They would end up with the international charges as would you! So how could you make or receive a phone call to/from someone back home or talk to someone in the country you are in? My solution was Google Voice.
Google Voice is VoIP solution which means you use your Internet connection to make and receive voice calls. Anyone with a phone number of their own can call you on your Google Voice number and you can call anyone. The nice thing is I have a Google Voice number that is in my normal area code and so its a normal call or text for anyone in the US to get to me no matter where I travel.
Getting a phone number on Google Voice is free and easy. You just need a Google account and then sign up for Google Voice. If you are going to use your Google Voice number to call a phone number issued by another country you will need to add funds to your Google Voice account to cover those international calling charges. However, I made a 20 minute call to a Portuguese number and it cost me $0.66.
You can download the Google Voice app from the app store and keep it on your cell phone all the time and hand out the phone number to whoever you want. When people call your Google Voice phone number it will ring on your cell phone. If they text your Google Voice phone number the text will land in Messages in your Google Voice app. Its like having a second phone number on your cell phone without a second bill.
To get texts and calls whether in the USA or in a foreign country you just need access to data. It could be WiFi or your eSIM. Google Voice is something you can get started with immediately and get your settings setup the way you want them in the app. Then practice using it before you actually need it.
There are a couple reasons why you wouldn’t want to ditch your carrier issued cell phone number and just use Google Voice. The first is most financial institutions will not let you use a phone number hosted by Google Voice (or other VoIP providers) as your multifactor solution to gain access to your bank account. In other words you can’t use your Google Voice number to get a text message with those temporary codes to login to your bank account.
Another issue I haven’t found a way around is when I call people from my Google Voice number I sometimes show up as Potential Spam. Either the number I have with Google Voice has been used for abuse before or this is a Google Voice issue. I’m not really sure.
WhatsApp is a communication app for your Apple, Android or Windows device that let’s you communicate via text, voice or video calls. It’s a convenient, device agnostic and international way of communicating. The caveat is both users need to have a WhatsApp account and have the app installed and ready to use. You do not have a 9 digit phone number issued by WhatsApp, the only way to communicate is within the app.
WhatsApp is similar to Facebook Messenger as in its an app that lets you communicate in written, spoken and video realms. Why WhatsApp is important is there are 2.5 billion people on WhatsApp and likely the host of your Airbnb or Bed and Breakfast is using WhatsApp to communicate with their guests. This helps them avoid international calling and text charges and provides a common platform that is in use by visitors from many countries.
You can download the app now and get used to using it before you leave on your trip. By default WhatsApp will give you a list of your contacts that are on WhatsApp when you first login. Find a friendly face in your list of friends using WhatsApp and send them a message to test it out.
Summary
Between these three solutions we were able to communicate with both friends and family back home and all the people we needed to in Portugal for less than $30 between us for 10 days.
Words of Wanderers 