How frequent travellers can avoid roaming charges

Use these tips to keep your bills down by reducing reliance on mobile networks

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In association with Gamma

The most frequent travellers of our time are often businessmen. Businessmen must travel for conferences, conventions, business deals, new partnerships and more. Interestingly enough, more than 30% of European corporate travellers fly at least once a month. If this tells us anything, it’s that businessmen can rack up pretty heavy roaming charges. If you’re a casual traveller or corporate employee on the move, there are some useful tips to avoid these steep charges, however. Roam free in future, without worrying about outrageous charges coming to your bank account.

Turn on airplane mode

When you do want to unwind without the ringing of a mobile, make sure you turn on airplane mode whenever your phone isn’t in use. Airplane mode turns off all wireless connections, including your mobile data. In our opinion, this is (by far) the easiest way to avoid roaming costs altogether.

Turn data roaming off altogether

If data roaming becomes unnecessary, remember to turn it off altogether. Otherwise, it will be there, in the background, accumulating all these extra costs that could have otherwise been avoided. Data roaming on Android and Apple devices can be turned off in the mobile networks area of your phone settings.

Turn off auto-sync

High data roaming charges can be avoided by ‘turning off’ a lot of the settings in your phone! One of these settings is auto sync, where your downloaded apps update on their own. Depending on the device, you might also be able to turn off background data. Updating apps can drain your data at an exponential rate, skyrocketing your eventual bill.

Use Wi-Fi networks as much as possible

Although free Wi-Fi might not always be available, it’s best to save your data for emergencies or essentials. Use Wi-Fi networks as much as possible. Publicly accessible networks can be found everywhere from hotels and airports to restaurants and parks. Any business convention is sure to have free Wi-Fi for potential guests.

Download entertainment beforehand

In the age of streaming, there’s so much entertaining content that can be downloaded when you do have Wi-Fi, and enjoyed later without. Web pages, books, music, videos, documents: save and download them all as you go. Netflix, for example, allows subscribers to download entire TV series in advance. Do this, and avoid incurring the excessive data roaming fees for streaming content while travelling.

Make sure you’re with the right provider

Not all mobile services are created equal. Some companies charge more for data usage abroad, a neat trick to acquire profit but not so good for the customer. Voice, data and mobile services by Gamma can help avoid incurring a nasty roaming bill at the end of your travels. As a UK-based, business-only mobile service with flexible tariffs and powerful bolt-ons, wherever your business trip takes you next, you are assured that (even though you might be ‘always-on’ to customers!) roaming costs will stay low. Connect worldwide, today.

And there you have it, just a few ways that you can roam free with your smartphone. WIth this in mind, you will be able to make sure you never fall victim to those unpredictable and hefty fees.