Comments on: HOW TO: Use your iPhone overseas

By: Peter Court

Peter Court — Wed, 22 May 2013 12:34:00 +0000

Re Option 2:
Phone calls, including receiving , will cost approx. $5/min and sending SMS 80c each. Bad but OK for the odd call.

Data on the other hand is dangerously expensive.

Without Data packs up to $15,000 per GB .. (That is not a typo). Even with DataPacks VERY VERY expensive and dangerous. A simple mail sync , or Google Maps lookup can cost your a big packet. Don’t do it.

The entire world Telco industry should be shot for maintaining these unconscionable rates.

Hence the focus here about how to ‘unlock’ your phone so you can get a local SIM (and hence get data and calls are similar rates to locally).

By: Gigi [Telstra Staff]

Gigi [Telstra Staff] — Mon, 20 May 2013 01:14:00 +0000

Hi Gabrielle,

There are two options available for customers who want to use there iPhone overseas which may be why this is confusing for you.

OPTION 1: unlock your iPhone BEFORE leaving Australia (see steps above) and use a local SIM card in the phone (eg one from Dubai or KL) to avoid international data roaming costs which can be expensive.

OPTION 2: enable international roaming BEFORE leaving Australia and use your iPhone as you currently do with your current Telstra number. You can purchase an add-on data roaming pack with this option to help monitor how much data you use. Please be aware that with this option you will be charged international rates which are higher than your current plan. For more info about this option, go here: http://www.telstra.com.au/mobile-phones/international-roaming/

I recommend you chat to our 24×7 Live Chat customer service crew (links above) about what option suits you best).

By: Gabrielle

Gabrielle — Sat, 18 May 2013 09:07:19 +0000

Hi, Im getting a bit confused by everyones advise. I have an iphone 5 not pre-paid. Im going to Italy on the 27th May for two weeks, then back to Dubai for a few nights then onto KL for another few nights. Can someone please just tell me simply what I am to do so i can use my iphone overseas. Im getting confused about sims and syncs etc. I didn’t think you could put another sim card in the iphone. Please help. Thankyou very much for your kind help.

By: Ian [Telstra Community Manager]

Ian [Telstra Community Manager] — Mon, 06 May 2013 04:39:16 +0000

Hey Paul,
This post has instructions on how to get your phone unlocked – http://exchange.telstra.com.au/?p=7698

By: Paul

Paul — Sun, 05 May 2013 06:10:56 +0000

Hi
I’m bought a iPhone 5 when I was in oz n haven’t using it yet. But the problem I have now is that it’s locked to Telstra so can’t using it back here in Sweden. What should I do?

By: Chris

Chris — Sat, 04 May 2013 13:01:42 +0000

This is the 2nd iPhone unlock with Telstra that has been a pain. The first one was told it would unlock within 24 hours but to no avail. I had to make 5 requests. Yes count them: 5. I started a week before a Singapore trip, got all the way through the 5 day trip and back home before it was finally unlocked. Not only that, I was promised by a billing person from the call centre that because of the inconvenience it would be ok to use roaming data on one of my nights in Singapore to pay bills, research some travel etc. I took her name as evidence. Sure enough I got a $480 bill for roaming when I got back. Billing didn’t believe anyone would promise me this and claimed there was no one by her name working there. I made a complaint with the complaints department and was spoken to extremely rudely and told I would not be credited. I had to make a complaint about the complaints department before I was eventually credited.

Now on to my 2nd unlock. I was told it would take a minimum 5 hours and up to 72. It has been 48 hours so far and nothing. I will I guess wait out the 72. As with last time, I was told that the only way to perform the unlock presently was to do the backup, reset to factory settings and restore. Unfortunately for me, upon doing this, iTunes is telling me that my backup is corrupt. It is a backup to a Macbook Pro with current version OSX, iPhone 5 on current version iOS and iTunes also on current version with no known hardware issues. Now I read here that really the restore isn’t totally necessary and a carrier update will come through anyway? So I risked a restore and it failed for no real reason. Great.

Telstra you need to clean up the process. Why your iPhones are locked I do not understand if the standard policy for postpay customers is free unlocking no questions asked. Why employ a team to take the calls and annoy customers with the inconvenience/waiting/potential risks to data?

Awful work Telstra.

By: Philip

Philip — Wed, 01 May 2013 13:10:53 +0000

Hi,

I am in London and just did the whole process using LiveChat. I should have organised this before I left. They said it should be ok in 24-72hrs, so all going well we should be ok to go. So if you forget, just log into your myaccount and then go to livechat.

Cheers.

By: Smoke

Smoke — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 11:19:42 +0000

Thanks for the reply.

Just to let you know, I waited 72 hours, borrowed a SIM from a friend who’s with another carrier and it worked. I didn’t need to connect to iTunes and sync it or anything.

So basically I just rang Telstra, gave them the relevant information and put in a SIM of a different carrier 3 days later. I made sure to check it before going overseas.

By: Ian [Telstra Community Manager]

Ian [Telstra Community Manager] — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 05:45:03 +0000

Hi Morgane, You could have an online chat with the 24x7 team and they should be able to help.

By: Morgane

Morgane — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 03:26:47 +0000

Can we do it wia MAIL or Online as im overseas and can’t call telstra ?