This is a bit outside of the usual Lithchat posting fare, but since it involves stuff that happened in Lithuania, it might fit. Within 48 hours of buying my iPhone here in Chicago on the day of their release, I was in Lithuania, making me, I suspect, the first person in the nation to have and use one. Now, obviously, I knew that I'd get slammed with international roaming charges, so I had a backup, unlocked Motorola SLVR L2 that I would use as my phone while abroad (which I subsequently destroyed and replaced with a Nokia 1112). The iPhone I had mostly for music and as a leash to the US, should any emergencies arise.

But because Cozy has free wireless, I was able even to use the iPhone in Vilnius to check my email and surf the web. This I did twice during my eight-day trip, and I also used international roaming once before flying out to confirm some information via email. Otherwise the iPhone sat in my room, doing no more duty than alarm clock and mp3 player.

Imagine, then, my surprise, when my bill from AT&T came with 50 separate "ROAM GPRS" charges totalling more than 6mb and, at $.02 a kilobyte, costing over $130.

So I called AT&T—and the details remain rather unclear—but the conclusion is simple: EDGE is "always on," so theoretically using the phone at all, even just to wake it up to get an email address from your contacts list, can incur hidden costs when you are abroad.

The financial threat is simple to understand: anywhere outside of the US (including, despite the variance in calling rates, Canada), data costs $.02 a kilobyte. It is possible to buy an international data package from AT&T, and the woman to whom I spoke pitched it to me, for $24.99 a month, which gives you 20mb to use. Overages are, depending on country, between two cents and a half cent a kilobyte. So clearly avoiding these charges is something an international traveler should find important.

AT&T will turn off your EDGE if you call them (at 611) and ask them to.  Presumably one should do this while boarding an international flight, since the airport pre-flight is the perfect place to use EDGE like a maniac. Then, one must call again upon return to the US to get the EDGE service reactivated. This clumsy procedure is the *only* way to travel internationally with your iPhone where one can both avoid ludicrous data charges and still call the device an actual "phone," should there be people trying to make contact in an emergency.

I asked the staffs at AT&T and Apple if an EDGE connection is established just in waking up the phone. Apple refused to answer, saying that "all billing" issues have to do with AT&T, ignoring the fact that I was asking a technical question. AT&T also did not answer straight, saying that EDGE is "always on," but that that's not a problem, since I have "unlimited data." Of course, when I reminded the woman that this was about international roaming, she just added that, yes, it would cost abroad, without answering, again, what the threshold of iPhone activity is before it makes EDGE connections and starts the two-cent-per meter.

For a long time, I had suspected that EDGE is "always on"--when I wake up my iPhone near cheap speakers, I often immediately hear the distinctive static that is cellular information floating in the ether, without even making a call or anything. And that seems to be the default that I will now assume. So until someone with more technical expertise can figure out what, precisely, one can do on an iPhone without either turning it to Airplane Mode or using the EDGE network, I will have to call AT&T to disable the service every time I fly abroad.

Incidentally, a lot of this information is contained, though in far more chaotic form, on the Apple forum about the iPhone.