When travelling for business, most people want to keep their expenses as low as possible. While it is possible to scour the internet to find the best deals on air travel, hotels and taxis, a lot of people often have trouble keeping their phone bills low or manageable when travelling overseas. Fortunately, we have come so far that there are now several ways to save money on your phone bills when travelling abroad for business. Here are the best options.
Talk to Your Provider
If you use your local phone number in another country to call a number in that country, that is still considered an international call and can be quite expensive. To keep this cost low, talk to your provider and ask whether they have a cheap international call plan for the country you will be travelling to. In many cases, major providers cover many of the popular business destinations. Switching to a plan that covers your destination might cost you a little money, but it is always cheaper in the long run than using your phone without switching over.
Use Your Computer
There are lots of programs that can help you make phone calls using your computer for free or at a very small cost. A great example is Skype. Although its popularity has dwindled in recent years, you can still make phone calls to almost any number in the world at a fraction of the cost of a traditional phone call.
If you want to save money on your phone bill, you can use online services to connect to a local network. Callers pay their phone operators the normal fee for local calls - typically free - while you pay a low per-minute rate. Through this service provided by companies like EasyRinger, you will get a new number and a local presence. Additionally, if you need to make a simple phone call or say hello to a loved one back at home, they can be excellent.
Switch to a Sim-Only, No-Contract Plan
Another great way to lower your phone bill is to only use what you need and no more. The problem a lot of people have is that, once their subscribed bundle runs out, their plan starts consuming their credit plan. Using credit to call, browse the internet or text is almost always more expensive than using a bundle.
Sim-only plans give you only what you need to use for the month and, when you run out of data, calls, or texts, the service does not charge you anything until you renew the plan. This is a great way to not only save money, but to also experiment to find out which plan would be adequate for your needs when you travel.
Providers like Lebara have several tiers with varying amounts of data, texts, as well as local and international minutes. Their flat rates ensure that you can budget more precisely and not be surprised by hefty phone bills should you ever deplete your allocation.
If you sign up with Lebara, you should also check out the Lebara refer a friend program. Here, you can earn cash online by referring anyone in your group to the network and earn money that might go towards paying for your Lebara plan. The first thing to do to earn money from home is sign up for the Lebara Refer & Earn program. You then share your unique link via email, text, WhatsApp or other means to whomever you know would love the affordable Lebara sim-only plans.
Lebara provides sim-only deals to their customers, with their plans only requiring that you purchase a SIM card loaded with the allocation you would like. They use a reliable and fast 4G network provided by Vodafone. This ensures you not only get coverage pretty much everywhere you may be in the UK, but that you also get fast download speeds for all your business video calls, tunnelling, and emails.
Shut Down Apps You Do Not Need
Data can be very expensive when travelling. Even when you are on a sim-only plan that allocates you a lot of data, you do not want to run out before your plan ends. Shutting down apps you do not need helps you save data and in turn helps lower your phone bills. If you cannot shut down the apps, you could use your phone’s settings to cut them off from the internet or to reduce the amount of data you use. The fewer apps you have connected to the internet and that consume data, the lower your phone bill will be.
Avoid Streaming
Another way to reduce the amount of data you use and hence your phone bills is to avoid streaming online content on your phone. It is likely that the hotel, serviced apartment or rental home you are staying at already has Wi-Fi connected, so use that instead of using your phone’s data plan.
Set Email to Fetch
A lot of people have their email accounts set to push. This means they receive every email that comes in, regardless of the data plan they may be on. This can get expensive, especially where you receive a lot of emails with large attachments.
To reduce data usage, set your email accounts to fetch. This means that the emails will only be fetched or pushed to you if you request them manually or when you are connected to a Wi-Fi network. If you will be receiving a lot of business emails while you travel, it would be better to set the emails to fetch every 30 or 60 minutes or as soon as you get connected on a trusted Wi-Fi network so you do not miss anything.
It is very easy to have an astronomically high phone bill when travelling abroad. This can be due to expensive international rates, going over your allocated data, minutes, and texts or because some non-essential apps use data while you travel. All of these are easy to remedy so it becomes easier to keep your phone bills low.
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