Every time when I travel I’m thinking how to save money on roaming. Now when Russian MTS charges ridiculous $4 per minute for incoming calls I tend to think about cost savings. So before you go for your next trip do the following:

1) Check with your mobile operator if they provide some special packages or discounts. For example, MTS provides some special discount for traveling to certain countries in Eurasia during the summer period  (http://www.mts.ru/news/2009-04-27-1023958) Or Rogers/Canada has special voice roaming packages for travelers to the USA.

2) Check roaming prices for GPRS/3G data. Most likely your operator has crazy pricing like AT&T’s $20 per Megabyte or MTS 512 Rubles per Megabyte (about $16). I would recommend you to turn off your GPRS roaming before the trip. On iPhone you can do this easily via Settings->Network->Data Roaming->OFF. On Nokia smart phones you can just delete the settings (because otherwise some pre-installed apps like Nokia Maps may open GPRS without you even knowing it). Another approach is to switch off GPRS right through the self service system or call center of your mobile operator. Some people think that they can enjoy monthly GPRS/3G package when traveling. Sorry, you cannot, this is available only in your home country or even home region. Your operator has to charge you when you roam with another operator. Some operators provide special data roaming packages, e.g. AT&T (http://www.wireless.att.com/learn/international/roaming/affordable-world-packages.jsp) for $60/month provides 50Mb in 90 countries. Check the details of the special offers from your operator before you go.

3) When you travel please note that SMSes are not as cheap as they are in your home country. For example, MTS charges about $0.05 per SMS in home network, and $0.40 when you traveling. More than this, when you are home you can enjoy SMS packages included into your tariff. BUT, when you travel your operator will charge you for any SMS sent. For US travelers: please note that US operators charge even for incoming SMS. This means that when you are home you can enjoy your SMS package, but when you travel the operator starts charging you for all incoming SMSes about $0.20 per 160 byte message. So for example, if you use twitter with mobile updates, you are not charged at home, but once you get abroad every SMS update will cost you $0.20! Don’t forget to turn off all your mobile updates on Twitter! Or maybe better just switch off your phone and leave your SIM card home;-)

4) Everybody knows that voice is expensive in roaming. The most simple thing you can do is to buy a local prepaid SIM card. For example when you arrive to Beijing, China, even before the customs and border control you can buy local China Mobile prepaid SIM. The China Mobile girls who sell SIMs are very attentive and even speak English a little;-) In Indonesia I use either Telkomsel or Indosat. Indosat provides very good quality and pricing for GPRS of around $0.10 per Mb.

5) For sure you also can use ArrivedOK to save on SMS notifications about your arrival. If you inform 5 people about your arrival you can save with ArriivedOK around $1.

6) When you are going to another country you still can enjoy posting to Twitter for free (http://c2s.me). This is available for registered ArrivedOK users. The trick works for GSM phones, and is based on the fact that the users are not charged by the operators when the call is dropped. So when you dial the ArrivedOK C2S access number +442033550595 the system drops your call and sends you an interactive text menu (USSD). Another trick used here is that operators do not charge users for USSD (basically they cannot do this). Not all networks allow USSD at all, but most of them do. So if after calling ArrivedOK C2S number you receive the menu, you can post to your twitter account which should be bound to your ArrivedOK account. To use ArrivedOK C2S you have to register on arrivedok.mobi web site from your computer before first use. It’s better to do this even before your trip begins. In this case you also can enjoy ArrivedOK trial for sending free SMS notifications to your friends.

7) To save on voice calls you also can consider using some Voice-Over-IP services like Skype or SIP. I usually use Skype for iPhone over free WiFi networks in the airports and Starbucks. Other options are pre-installed SIP clients in Nokia Symbian phones. The good SIP VoIP service is provided by SIPNET (www.sipnet.ru). It’s a bit tricky to configure it. But when you need to talk a lot it really matters to figure out how to use VoIP.

We at Arrivedok.mobi deployed an experimental mobile Twitter add-on application that lets you tweet from your cell phone FOR FREE even from abroad, avoiding charges for SMS, voice or data transfer.

It is available for ArrivedOK registered users only.

How to use it and save money on text and data traffic:

• First, login to your ArrivedOK account or sign-up and authorize your mobile phone to use with ArrivedOK.
• Second, make sure your ArrivedOK account is bound with Twitter in your Profile:My Blogs settings.
• Third, dial +442033550595 FREE of charge from the phone you registered with ArrivedOK and follow the instructions on your phone’s display. See below how it works.

Dial +442033550595. You won’t hear a voice reply. Your call just evokes the interactive menu you’ll see next.	You’ll see the numbered menu. Press OK, enter “1″ (no quote marks) for Twitter, and send it back.	Likewise, choose between the options that appear: (1) tweet whatever you want, (2) preview & tweet a random quotation, (3) tweet your followers about that mobile tool, “0″ to return.
For example, you choose “1> Type & tweet”. You see the usual “What are you doing?” Twitter prompt. Press OK and start typing…	… like that. Then press OK to send it. That’s it.	You’ll get a confirmation that your tweet has been sent. You can just hang up now.

WARNING: It may not work in all mobile networks. For support inquiries, please visit our Support page or email to our techsupport@.

If you want to learn more about the underlying Call2Service and USSD technologies – check out that page.

“My last travel consisted of 6 flights (the guy was flying from Russia to Beijing, Singapore, Jakarta, and all the way back. Click a city name to see how ArrivedOK auto-updates his Twitter status – Editor). Entering all of them into ArrivedOK manually might take time. Fortunately ArrivedOK is integrated with TripIt, so all I needed to do was just forwarding all my booking confirmation emails and e-tickets to TripIt and then importing those records to ArrivedOK. Follow these steps to do it:

1. You should have a registration with TripIt.com. If you don’t, go to their website and sign-up.
2. Forward all your booking confirmation emails and e-tickets to plans@tripit.com
3. Assuming you have an ArrivedOK account, sign-in to ArrivedOK and select New Record. You will see “Import from Tripit” link.
4. Click it and ArrivedOK will import all your new flights and will offer you to edit them. At that stage you can specify your cell phone to track and notifications for all of your flights. Or you can do this later.
5. Don’t forget to make the newly imported records ‘Active’ by clicking the button in the Records Menu.

Now you are ready to fly. Happy landings!”

Dear beta testers,

As you know, we’ve cancelled the limitation on the number of tracking records for the public beta period. Now you can track as many your arrivals as you want (actually, there’s 20 tracking records limitation, but we think it’s quite enough even for frequent flyers).

We also decided to extend the public beta testing of ArrivedOK until 30 August 2009. Please don’t forget that 100 beta testers, who submit us most valuable from our point of view feedback will win 1-year free ArrivedOK subscription!

And one more thing: the long-awaited ArrivedOK US is coming soon!

• “Can I import trips from TripIt so I don’t have to fill everything in?”
• “Linking to tripit.com – that would be really magic.”
• “I use www.tripit.com for all my travels. Please use their RSS feed to create records for me.”

These are quotes from our beta-testers’ emails.

Following these requests we want to announce that ArrivedOK has just integrated with TripIt and made the import of flight records stored in TripIt available to its users. You can find that option at ‘Create event‘ page. It is really a one-click feature. Please check it out and let us know what you think about it.

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