Question about international Blackberry usage

Hi all, I’m no technological guru so I wanted to seek the opinions of some of you more electronically-savvy users. My question is about Wi-Fi usage on my personal Blackberry. Specifically, If I go to Mexico and we have free Wi-Fi in the hotel, will I be able to connect to the internet on my Blackberry for free? Or, will I need to purchase an international data plan regardless of whether there is free Wi-Fi in the hotel? FYI, I am based on the U.S. and have a domestic data plan only, and I just want to know what’s free and what’s not…I’d hate to connect to the internet internationally thinking that it’s free, only to come home and see that I’ve paid through the nose because of roaming charges that I wasn’t aware of… Thanks!

You should be able to put it in airplane mode and turn wifi on. That way it won’t try to pick up any cell signal and you will only be using the free wifi.

OK, great – so essentially that just means turning off all mobile services and bluetooth, but leaving WiFi on, right? Thanks…

numi Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > OK, great – so essentially that just means > turning off all mobile services and bluetooth, but > leaving WiFi on, right? Thanks… Yeah. I know some people in my MBA class used their iPhone during a study abroad via Skype in WiFi zones. If the mobile portion is off, it should just act as a wireless internet device.

I’m not sure how data intensive a blackberry is, but receiving e-mails abroad on mine (through international data) costs much less than sending a text. You just have to be careful not to download anything. Wifi would be much better though.