TrackMyTour Blog
Roaming Costs
Last updated April 19th, 2009 by chrisMinimizing cost is a primary feature of TrackMyTour. Roaming costs (the cost of Internet access on your phone in foreign countries) can be very expensive. For example, the AT&T pay-per-use international data rate is $0.0195 per KB, which converts to $19.50 per MB. It’s bloody expensive when you consider that a typical page can be up to 0.20MB in size. Checking your e-mail a few times or browsing a few pages can quickly put your phone bill into the hundreds or thousands of dollars.
TrackMyTour is meant to be used when traveling and has therefore been developed to minimize data transfer and roaming costs. This is achieved by the following:
- No hidden background process on TrackMyTour ever does an upload or download of data. Data is only transferred when you press a button that requires it.
- Adding a single waypoint requires about 4KB* of data (depending on the size of your comment), which works out to a few cents on your phone bill (depending on your data plan).
- New waypoints can also be saved offline without any data transfer. Offline waypoints can be submitted at a later time when you have WiFi access (e.g., at your hotel or at a coffee shop).
All other features should be used sparingly if roaming costs are of concern.
Always know the conditions of your contract and how roaming works before traveling abroad. Not doing so could leave you with a nasty surprise on your phone bill. If you don’t understand how roaming works then I advise you to disable it completely until you do.
* Edit: This post was written before photo support was added to the app. Adding photos can increase the data usage by about 7KB-20KB per photo.
