iPhone Questions for Kevin Maney

Does Kevin Maney take requests? I do hope so, because Walt Mossberg's mailbox column this morning uncharacteristically raises more questions than it answers.

(Update: Never mind. I've answered all these questions, and more, myself.)

Until Apple initiates iPhone service with foreign carriers, which is expected to be a gradual process that will begin in Europe, iPhone owners traveling abroad will be forced to roam on AT&T and to pay through the nose for data as well as voice calls made over cellular-phone networks...
For email and the Web, the best bet for iPhone owners is to avoid using cellular networks and employ the phone’s Wi-Fi capability, which can cost nothing extra. Try to find a free or reasonably priced Wi-Fi hot spot in which to check email and do Web browsing. You may even be able to make cheap voice calls this way using Internet-based calling services like JaJah (mobile.jajah.com) which, in my domestic tests, worked properly via the iPhone’s Web browser.

"Pay through the nose" is right. It's almost impossible to find international data rates on the AT&T website, although if you look hard enough you'll find a special international data plan for people who want to pay an extra $25 per month. I tried asking the support people, and they told me that without that plan, international data costs $.0195 per kb, or $19.97 per megabyte. Obviously, in that case, I won't be doing any web browsing when I'm travelling internationally, unless I'm on wifi. But if the wifi stops working for some reason, it would cost me $18.49 just to download the Portfolio.com home page, once.

What's also scary is that the iPhone automatically starts downloading data every time you click on the Safari or Mail buttons at the bottom of the screen – buttons which are right next to the Phone and iPod buttons. Once you click on the Mail button, in fact, the iPhone automatically downloads your 50 most recent emails, and there's no way of stopping it. Which can get very expensive very quickly.

So some questions for Kevin:

Is there some way of turning off the phone functions of the iPhone but keeping the wifi active, when I'm using the email or web browser, to make sure that I don't run up enormous data bills by mistake? I have a feeling that if you remove the SIM card, you turn off wifi functionality as well.
Alternatively, is there some way of turning off the data service when I'm travelling, so AT&T won't even let me run up those bills in the first place?
How will JaJah help me make cheap voice calls when I'm travelling in a wifi-equipped area? As I understand it, JaJah is a ringback service, where you type in the number you want to call and then you pick up your phone when it starts ringing. But international roaming rates are the same whether you're making a call or receiving one – which means that just placing the call directly costs the same as receiving a call from JaJah, no?

I'm sure the answers to these questions will be of great interest to everybody with an iPhone who intends to leave the US at any point.

Update: After speaking to a friendly woman named Cassandra at AT&T's international help line (800 335-4685 from within the US, 916 843-4685 from outside the US), I think the answers to (1) and (2) are no and yes, respectively. You can't turn off the phone functions, but you can phone up AT&T before you leave on your trip, and ask them to turn off the data functions. The first person I talked to told me that would stop the wifi from working too, but I don't believe him.

I did, however, learn one distressing thing: the $25-a-month international data plan has a one-year minimum contract with a $175 early-cancellation fee. In other words, it's useless for all but the most frequent of international travellers, and you can't simply activate it before you go on holiday and then turn it off upon your return.

So now I'm trying to work out whether I should turn off all the data functions when I'm travelling, in order to prevent an inadvertently astronomical data bill. The thing is, it's precisely when you're travelling that the excellent Google Maps functionality on the iPhone really comes into its own. Does anybody have a feel for how many kilobytes of data are downloaded during a typical Google Maps session?

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