C12 | Life The Sunday Times | Sunday, March 26, 2017

Mr How Wei Jie first used a Wi-Fi router on a trip twoyears ago and still prefers it for its ability to connect tomultiple devices.

The 26-year-old, a co-owner of Poke Doke restaurantin Millenia Walk, travels three or four months a year. “Ihave my phone, my laptop and my iPad, and if I use anoverseas SIM card or a data plan, I would have to tethereverything to my phone. This will be very expensiveand the connection may not be as good,” he says.

The palm-sized router is handy on family trips as thegroup can plan their journey, look up reviews andcheck directions on the go. “There are six of us. If I hadbought a roaming plan or a SIM card, my family mem-bers would also have to buy their own plans. A router ismore cost-effective.”

OPTIONSThe Changi Recommends travel service company of-fers popular router options. Travellers place their orderat least one day before their trip on www.changirecom-mends.com, then pick up and return their router at24-hour Changi Recommends booths located in everyterminal. Payment is due upon return.

The router costs $5 a day for Hong Kong, South Ko-rea, Thailand, Japan, Taiwan and Vietnam; $8 a day forChina, the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia; and $12a day for Australia, Europe and the United States. It con-nects up to six devices and offers unlimited data.

Routers from Yourwifi (yourwifi.com.sg) cost $6 to $38a day, depending on the destination, and can be used indozens of far-flung countries, including Mongolia, Ar-gentina and Fiji. Travellers order their routers at leasttwo days in advance. The router can be picked up at theYourwifi store in Eu Tong Sen Street or delivered for $7.

Y5Buddy (y5buddy.sg) rents routers at $5 to $10 a dayfor destinations in Asia, $12 to $15 for the Americas and$10 to $20 for selected countries elsewhere. The ordershould be made a few days prior to the trip. Collect therouter at International Plaza or have it delivered for $5.There is a minimum three-day rental and a $50 refunda-ble deposit.

PROSTravellers can maintain their local number whilebrowsing online without incurring extra charges. Wi-Firouters can connect to five to 10 devices at one time.

CONSConnection will be limited to the battery life of the rout-er, so travellers may need to carry a powerbank.

Travellers may also be limited by the Fair Usage Poli-cy in some countries, which asserts a daily threshold onhigh-speed Internet connections, so that users do nottake advantage of the “unlimited” service. Once thethreshold is reached, users can still connect to Wi-Fi,but at slower speeds. Daily rental is expensive in lessfrequented destinations.

When photographer and Web developer Samuel Ow,26, first travelled for work some years back, he relied ondata-roaming plans from his local telco. But after heracked up a $522 bill on a 10-day trip to Europe in 2013,he switched to overseas SIM cards.

His work is heavily based on the Internet and Insta-gram is an important marketing tool for him. He re-quires at least 1.5 to 2GB of data for seven days overseas,in addition to Wi-Fi in hotels.

“The price per megabyte offered by telcos is too high.Loading my Instagram page alone would cost me and itwould cost much more to load a video. If I buy a SIMcard overseas, I save much more money and the cover-age and reception is better,” he says.

Even though juggling overseas SIM cards and not be-ing able to receive calls to his Singapore number can beinconvenient, he lives with that. The prices of roamingpackages will have to drop further before he switchesback.

OPTIONSDual SIM card smartphones such as the Xiaomi Mi Note2 allow travellers to toggle between two SIM cards.They can keep their local telco SIM card in place to re-ceive calls and text messages, but toggle to an overseasSIM for data.

Short-term pre-paid SIM cards can be purchased attelco shops around the world. Some telcos havepre-packaged SIM cards for tourists.

Thai telco AIS (www.ais.co.th), for instance, sells Trav-eller SIM cards, ranging from 299 baht (S$12) to 599baht. The 299 baht card provides 100 baht worth of freelocal talk time and unlimited data for one week, thoughthe first 1GB will be at a maximum 2.5GB speed and sub-sequent data usage will be slower.Travellers can pur-chase the cards at the airport in Thailand or at ChangiRecommends booths in Changi Airport and add moredata to the cards as needed.

In Hong Kong, pick up the Discover Hong Kong Tour-ist SIM Card, which provides unlimited local calls and ei-ther 1.5GB of data with a five-day pass (HK$88 or S$16)or 5GB of data with an eight-day pass (HK$118), both at4G speed. Travellers can purchase the cards at the HongKong International Airport arrival hall or at more than1,000 convenience stores in the city.

PROSHigh quality, often unlimited connectivity at an afforda-ble price. Travellers are still contactable via Inter-net-based calling services such as Skype and Viber.

CONSOverseas SIM cards can be difficult to find and pur-chase, especially if one does not speak the local lan-guage. On multi-destination trips, travellers will likelyneed to buy a different card in every country. They willnot receive calls and text messages directed to their Sin-gapore number.

Mr Gerald Wang, 36, is overseas 60 to 70 per cent of thetime for his job as head of government technology atconsulting firm IDC Asia/Pacific. Remaining connect-ed on the go – and being able to respond to calls ande-mail from clients – is an important part of his job.

“I love to have data on the go, especially when it’s myfirst time in the country. I use my data to look up direc-tions and see if the taxi drivers are cheating me. It’s im-portant for personal security and for staying connect-ed,” he says.

These days, travellers can easily see what data-roam-ing plans are available at their destination and sign upfor them with text messages to telcos and via telco appsand websites.

When travelling around Asia, Mr Wang uses M1’s Da-ta Passport, which allows him to use his local data planoverseas. Overall, he is happy with it, though connec-tion can be sluggish in some developing countries,such as Vietnam, where he found that the available da-ta was too slow to load image-heavy websites and appslike Facebook. He had to wait till he was in a Wi-Fi zoneto connect.

“For WhatsApp or Google Maps, it’s fine. But for per-sonal use, to post on social media, it can get frustrating.One needs to temper expectations and be realistic. Dif-ferent countries will present different experiences.”

OPTIONSM1’s Data Passport is a monthly subscription servicewhich allows customers to use their local data planwhen they are travelling overseas, without needing topay for extra data. If customers exceed their local databundles while overseas, they will be billed just $10.70per GB, with a monthly cap of $188.32. Data Passport isavailable in 56 countries and costs $10, $25 or $50 touse, depending on the destination.

M1’s prepaid customers can also use their prepaid lo-cal data in Hong Kong, Indonesia, Macau, Malaysia andTaiwan at no additional charge.

Of StarHub’s five roaming plans, DataTravel is thenewest and has the best value. At $15 for 2GB or $20 for3GB, the data is good for 30 days and can be used inHong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines,South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Australia and New Zea-land.

Or buy a Happy Roam prepaid SIM card for $15, $32or $50 at locations islandwide, including 7-Eleven,Cheers and SingPost stores, or online at the StarHubwebsite and pick it up at Changi Airport.

Travellers can top up the card with their preferred da-ta-roaming package, which charges Singapore datarates, from $5 for 1GB of data to $20 for 3.6GB. The cardcan be used in 11 places, including Thailand, HongKong, Japan, Taiwan and Malaysia.

For the widest roaming coverage, Singtel’s five dataplans offer connections in 113 destinations. Starting at$20, Singtel’s ReadyRoam package provides 1GB of da-ta which can be used in any of the 26 partner countriesacross Asia, Europe, the United States and Canada for30 days. If customers exceed their 1GB bundle, theycan continue to roam at the package’s data prices.

Singtel also offers affordable monthly subscriptionpackages for Australia and Malaysia. The DataRoamSaver Australia Monthly and DataRoam Saver MalaysiaMonthly plans cost $10 for 1GB, with excess datacharged at the same local rate in Australia and Malay-sia. In other destinations, customers can buy the DataRoam Daily 100MB Plan, which costs $10 for 100MBand can be used in more than 100 countries.

Singtel even helps customers to stay connected inthe air with its In-flight Unlimited Data Plan Value. Fora fixed $29 a flight, travellers can access unlimited datafor their entire in-flight journey, as long as the flighttime is within a 24-hour period from activating thepackage.

PROSTravellers will remain contactable and continue to re-ceive calls and text messages on their local number.They can lock onto their telco’s preferred networks toavoid excess charges and also set spending caps easilyvia their telco app or website to prevent exorbitant bills.

There are many plans, from low- to unlimited-dataplans, so travellers can make a selection according totheir needs. Many modern data-roaming plans workacross multiple countries, so there is no need to changeplans or SIM cards while travelling.

CONSEven though the price of data-roaming plans hasdropped dramatically over the past few years, it canstill be quite expensive to roam in countries where lo-cal telcos do not have premium partnerships. In somecountries, buying an overseas SIM card may still pro-vide more data for less money.

The telco’s overseas partner network may provideslower, inferior connection to the high speeds Singapo-reans are used to.

Data roam with telcosSIM cards

For too long, travellers have beenplagued by excessive roamingcharges.

Roaming plans without any pricecaps that are difficult to under-stand and use were too oftenresponsible for hundreds of dollarsin fees.

Fortunately, over the past threeyears, local telcos have addressedthe concerns of customers and theresult is a streamlined, affordable

menu of data-roaming plans, help-ing travellers stay connected whilethey journey overseas.

StarHub, for instance, cut itsroaming plans from more than 10to five simple plans over the pastthree years.

In 2015, M1 went a step furtherand launched a single platform, Da-ta Passport, which allows custom-ers to use their existing data plansoverseas.

Since then, M1 has seen its pool ofactive data-roaming users rise bymore than 200 per cent. Data-roam-ing traffic has increased eight-fold.

Associate Professor Goh KimHuat, at the division of informationtechnology and operations manage-ment at Nanyang TechnologicalUniversity, says prices havedropped and will likely continue todrop as local telcos respond to con-sumer demand and competition.

“Consumers increasingly need toremain constantly connected tothe Internet – even mid-air now –and this spurs demand like neverbefore.

“This inherent demand drives in-novation in supply and leads to com-petition from alternative providersof mobile data. If telcos do not de-crease their data-roaming prices,there are various ways consumerscan bypass these services,” he says.

Telcos already face stiff competi-tion from other services, such asrentable pocket-sized Wi-Fi rout-ers and traveller-targeted local SIMcards, which have entered the mar-ket in recent years.

It is good news for data-dependenttravellers, who now have a range ofplans to suit their connectionneeds.

vlydia@sph.com.sg

Wi-Fi router

Data-roaming plans have become streamlined and affordable,helping travellers stay connected while they are overseas

EASYROAMING

Travel

Lydia VaskoTravel Correspondent

Source: SINGTEL STRAITS TIMES GRAPHICS

How much data? 6.14MBUse Google Maps for about �ve minutes to �nd your way

5KBWhatsApp your family back home

7.5KBTweet three times with photos

11MBWatch a YouTube video for about 10 minutes

20MBUpload 20 photos on Facebook

100KBCheck your e-mail

1.8MBE-mail urgent documents to your boss

2.4MBPost two photos on Instagram #bestmeal #shiok

100KBBrowse through �ve pages of search results

1MBView your friends' Facebook status updates

300MBStream about 10 songs from AMPed

441KBCheck in to a place on Foursquare