Most cellular providers have special temporary plans you can set up before you leave to greatly reduce your cost of making calls from Baja. For example I use the AT&T Viva Mexico add-on plan so calls from Mexico just use my regular and rollover minutes. You can set this plan to begin when you arrive and end when you return. Other providers have similar plans.
Your iPhone or Android smart phone will run up a bill into the thousands of dollars when traveling in Mexico unless you turn off most of those services that make your phone “smart” The following instructions are for the iPhone but you will find equivalent settings in your Android phone.
iPhone:
If you are really paranoid and plan to rarely use your phone just put the phone in “Airline” mode.
To be able to use your phone for voice and wifi:
1. Go to “Settings,” then “General” and then “Network.” Shut of off “Data Roaming” that way you can still use WIFI and make phone calls but will not pay huge cellular data charges. but can still make phone calls.
2, Change your e-mail settings: Go to “Settings,” then “Mail, Contacts, Calendars” and “Fetch New Data.” and TURN OFF this off.
3. Once at your destination get the local WIFI user name and password and use that for all your smart phone work.
3.Incoming calls that go to voice mail also cost you. Tell friends to only leave short messages for non vital calls.
If you need to have the ability to use wireless data to check e-mail, view maps, update Facebook ect, with the your smart phone sign up for an international data plan. One of the cheapest is the $25 Global Add-On plan, which gives you 20 megabytes of data at $1.25 per megabyte. That compares to nearly $20 per megabyte if you don’t have an international plan.
AT&T rates Dec. 2013: Web site: http://www.wireless.att.com/learn/international/viva-mexico.jsp
T-Mobile customers that have the Simple Choice plan visit any of the 115 global destinations (countries and their territories) covered under “Simple Global Roaming,” T-Mobile customers can make calls from Mexico from La Ventana and Los Barriles for 20 cents/minute basic data services for free and text for free. http://www.t-mobile.com/International/RoamingOverview.aspx?tp=Inl_Tab_RoamWorldwide
