Business travelers traveling overseas with a mobile phone that supports international roaming should be aware as to how some calls are billed. Many people assume, incorrectly, that if they allow a call to ring and then go to voicemail, they won’t be charged.  In actuality, such inaction might result in a billed call due to a phenomenon known as “tromboning,” a process where the call goes through an extra circuit to get to its destination (imagine a trombone player pulling out the slide, thereby creating an extended route from mouthpiece …

We’ve recently heard from multiple business travelers who used their T-Mobile G1 smartphones on overseas trips.   All had a common complaint: they followed T-Mobile’s recommended guidelines to turn data roaming off yet they still received a bill for hundreds of dollars of data usage during the trip.
A report from our client RJ, a road warrior who flies to Europe several times per month, was typical.  After purchasing his new G1 and turning data roaming and data synchronization off, his bill for data roaming was $319.55.  T-Mobile customer service did agree …

Whether you know it or not, your smartphone may be surfing the Net – and running up your bill – during trips abroad.  Discussion forums are full of reports from business travelers with high phone bills due to unintended data access: comments such as “one day, $768,” “one trip, $4800″ abound.
This can happen even if you don’t think you are using any data services.  For example, users of SimulSays, a clever visual voicemail application that allows the user to scroll through and select voicemails on screen similar to the Apple …

The landline phone, while nowhere near extinction, is something that fewer and fewer people rely on.  Where are all of your phone numbers stored? Your mobile phone, of course.  How do your friends reach you? Same answer. Besides, you can’t send a text message to a landline phone.
But what if your mobile phone gets poor reception at home or the plan you are currently on doesn’t support hours of catching up with friends?
T-Mobile HotSpot @Home is a fixed-mobile convergence (FMC) service offering that allows you to make unlimited domestic calls …

16 days later, I’m back.  (See Part I as well.)   I found a few things rather useful for those traveling on business and wanted to share these with you.
Skype Pro
Skype Pro is a relatively new offering that costs only $3 per month but offers many features particularly useful to the road warrior.  Most notable is the international traveler calling plan.  Users pay no per minute charges for calls to landlines within the same country or region (a connection fee per call, $0.045, may apply).  Coverage includes 28 countries, all …

It’s been said that the telephone is one of the most important business tools ever invented.  Today, given the popularity of the mobile phone, that statement is more true than ever.
Why is it then that many business travelers fall off the communications grid when they travel internationally?
Perhaps the greatest reason is the fact that the United States has multiple mobile telephone standards (the two most popular are CDMA and GSM, but there are others as well).  The rest of the world, with the exception of Japan and some parts of …

RESEARCH IN MOTION BLACKBERRY PEARL
Both T-Mobile and Cingular offer the BlackBerry Pearl by Research in Motion, although only T-Mobile has the new white Pearl.  The Pearl is an 88 gram quad-band device with a 240×260 color display.  It supports GSM/GPRS and EDGE (Enhanced Data for GSM Evolution) and includes a memory expansion slot for a MicroSD card.  It supports BlackBerry e-mail, public instant messaging via AOL, ICQ, MSN, and Yahoo, corporate instant messaging (Lotus Sametime), an HTML browser, and uses RIM’s SureType keyboard technology.  Phone features include voice activated dialing, …