I will be going to Iraq soon. Due to my job in the Navy I will be able to get away with bringing my phone. I was wondering if anyone had any advice on what to do about the service plan? I don't want to rack up a $500 monthly bill. I primarily use my phone for data and messaging, but feel that I will use a lot of talk time while I am away. Any input would be gratefully appreciated.
I think that you can kill you contract because of a deployment. I think that you can buy a sim card over their to avoid roaming fees. You need to unlock your phone before you go.
I think it is a rip off though. Figure out who has the best coverage there and buy a prepaid sim card. Att doesn't have service there, all you would be doing is paying att extra to use another network, cut out the middle man.
If you really want your own phone to use whenever you want is get a sattelite phone . Its not that difficult to get to the phone banks they have set up there all through at & t anyway you just need phone cards. Even the MWR's have phones you could use for free. its just a wait sometimes for both those options. No american service works in iraq right now they have, i believe, two cellular services of their own but its hit or miss with the service. The last american service phone i saw work was t-mobile but that was kuwait right before you get in country.
Your not gonna have that option of data. If you wanna text you could go to your company web site and text from there. like vtext .com and i know at&t has something like that on there website
also if you can get enough ppl and youll be based in one location for a while, see if anyone is going home that are selling a sat internet set up that they bought there. if you get enough but not too many too slow the connection you would be able to use something like skype from your own personal laptop.
Hmm, ya I thought about the laptop thing (just wasn't sure how to go about it), but I will have an office with a computer anyway (just won't really be able to install certain things on it. I just wanted to have a way to communicate with my wife (we use BlackBerry Messenger constantly). I guess I could resort to relying on email. Thank you all for your input.
