How to reduce your roaming data costs

While roaming, the granularity at which your data traffic is charged, is larger than usual. (I get rounded to 1Kb in my home network, and to 25 to 100 Kb while roaming).

Basically, every data “session” is rounded to the granularity amount.
What happens when you are roaming, is that your phone switches networks and bands (from 2G to 3G and backwards) a lot more often since it can connect to virtually any network available in that country. Now, if you have been on a network for an hour and your BB session transferred 5 Kb of data, and the phone switches over, you get billed for the entire 25 to 100 Kb granularity chunk.

You can easily figure out how this will drive up your costs. You end up paying 5-10 times more data traffic that you use, at a price which is 5-10 time more … basically, you can pay up to 100 times more!

What you can do?
Simple. Set your phone to manually select a network. Select the network manually and voila, things are better (also, don’t allow your phone to change from 2G to 3G automatically). Stick to non-3G and you will be fine, as it has wider coverage than 3G, anywhere in the world.

Some prove
To prove my theory, when I went in my vacation (abroad), I left the phone to automatically switch networks for 3 days. Then I put it to manual and when I got home, I requested a detailed invoice.

And boy … was I right. In the first 3 days, I had about 5-6 data sessions closed and rounded up, daily. In the last 4 days … I had 5 sessions in TOTAL. The cost difference was HUGE.
Keep in mind that I have spent most of my time in the vicinity of my hotel, and the swimming pool. The 5-6 sessions were when I went out for walks and the phone switched networks or switched to 3G and back to 2G.

Give it a try and feel the difference for yourself.