The iPhone on the road, pt 4: The Bill
A simple plea to AT&T: Texts ARE data!
With that said, my travels ended and I got my first AT&T invoice from my far-flung travels. I managed to stick to a lean 15 MB of data used (both downloaded and uploaded) on the iPhone. I called stateside a handful of times using the international roaming plan, which reduced the charge per minute to $1.29 from $1.69. I found myself becoming the master of keeping calls from rounding up to the next chargeable minute (my average call time to the States was 2:59). In the end, my invoice was only $30 more than it usually is, but I'm not sure if all the calls and charges have come through.
The International data plan did prove useful.
I checked my email on the road every now and then (not as frequently as the auto-check would have). Using email, I managed to send a few pictures of koalas and kangaroos I took from the iPhone's Camera Roll. It was nice to access Google Maps, which primarily worked well with one notable exception (A search for a Hungry Jack's - the local name for Burger King - led us to a dark part of Cairns and a "Hungry Joe's," we didn't stick around long enough to find out what that was). It was nice to access the weather (which, as per usual, was woefully wrong). The international data plan is advisable in Australia as our experience showed that there were not a lot of WiFi networks around (in fact, we kept finding people's mobile phones as being WiFi access points).
What the data plan did not cover was the cost of SMS text messages. I must admit, I am a SMS addict. That said, I never really thought SMS texts were considered separate from data. Okay, I may have known on some level, but somehow I fooled myself into thinking of AT&T benevolence. Well, at $.50 a message, I won't make that mistake again. Lucky for me, I didn't send that many messages, but it still cost me a good chunk of change that could have otherwise been spent on a pint or five.
Last, I still don't know if I can take these international features off of my AT&T plan. The irony is that AT&T switched from itemized paper billing invoices to simplified consolidated invoices - but this actually leaves customers like me in the dark. I still have no idea if all my calls placed have posted to my account yet.
I guess sometimes you have to be careful for what you wish for as you may get it.
Kevin Ho is a San Francisco attorney and the owner of a brand new iPhone. He'll be writing about the experience for the CNET Blog Network, and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. 
However, for purposes of billing, SMS has always been a separate plan, because
it's done over the cell network, not EDGE. Therein lies the difference.
You might want to check out meebo.com for iPhone - lets you use AIM, MSN,
etc. in a decent interface. Requires a stable data connection, though - the big
downside.
and put it in your old tri-band phone or buy a second cheap
phone. It will be much cheaper! Here in the Philippines you
can buy a Nokia for $40 and calling the US will only cost you
.17 cents/min and you don't have to worry getting charged for
a fraction of a minute because you're charged per second.
Don't forget to sms your new local no. to your friends and
ask them to call you on your new local no. to avoid
excessive roaming charges. Here in the Phils. you don't get
charged when receiving calls, only when making calls- that's
another thing I like about our system here.