I was off to Amsterdam for a few days for a conference at the RAI conference centre.
Following some issues with roaming in Spain in 2022 I have been a little concerned about travelling abroad and if I would have connectivity issues. After Spain though, I had travelled to Ireland and Germany and both times everything just worked. However the last time I went abroad, in the summer to Portugal, I had a few issues when roaming with excessive data usage on my iPhone.
I have a Three contract with unlimited calls, unlimited texts, and unlimited data. As this is a pre-October 2021 contract I am able to use all those allowances when roaming, but there is a 12GB fair use limit. On all my previous visits abroad, before Portugal, I have never come close to reaching that limit.
In Portugal I reached 80% of my 12GB limit within the first twenty four hours. Back then, I turned off mobile data and then I went into Settings -> Mobile Data and turned off all the apps which could use mobile data. There were a lot of apps.
So when I flew to Amsterdam last week, whilst I was on the plane went into Settings -> Mobile Data and turned off virtually all the apps which could use mobile data. Took me a while as there were a fair few. I turned off mobile data for virtually all my apps and also specifically iCloud Drive and iCloud Backup. I am pretty sure they were the culprits for my excessive data usage whilst in Spain.
I then reset the mobile data usage statistics. So when I came back to the UK I could check how much data I had used.
Schiphol Airport had free WiFi, so I could use that in the airport whilst I had a ninety minute wait to get through passport control.
Now I was lucky that the hotel and conference venue had good WiFi, and even Schiphol Airport’s WiFi was good. So there was less reliance on using my mobile data.
When I was walking around Amsterdam away from the hotel and the conference venue, I did turn on mobile data for specific apps that I wanted to use, finance and travel apps for example.
After arriving back in the UK I checked the mobile data usage statistics I had used whilst roaming in the Netherlands from Tuesday to Friday.
It was 1.4GB and 1.4GB is a lot less than the 12GB fair use allowance I have. So was pleased with that. I never felt I was limited in how I used mobile data abroad, as when I did need to use an app, I just turned on mobile data for it. I was lucky in having decent WiFi, so that did make a difference.