If you’re an AT&T postpaid smartphone customer, you can now travel overseas with ease and stay connected thanks to the company’s new international day passes. For a daily fee of $10, you can use your existing smartphone plan, including data, mobile hotspot, calling, and texting, for 24 hours of access in more than 200 countries. The international day passes are not available for data-only devices like hot spots and connected cars, and it’s unclear whether tablets are included or not.
The new plan also introduces a few exciting features. If you have multiple people on your family plan who activate a day pass in the same 24-hour period, the second, third, fourth, and beyond will get half off the daily fee, which is $5. Moreover, AT&T has put a 10-day cap on billing, meaning that you only pay $100 for the first line of service during your billing month, and $50 for any extra lines that also activate day passes. The rest of the month is free to use your plan internationally.
The new international day passes offer a substantial price drop for AT&T postpaid customers, although it doesn’t apply to prepaid, subsidiaries, or MVNO plans like Cricket. It applies to any legacy AT&T smartphone plans, making it a great option for AT&T postpaid customers. However, the deal only applies to the consumer plan, not the business plan.
To use the international day passes, you need to contact AT&T Advance or activate the international day pass option on your online account. The moment you start using your phone, you’ll be billed $10 for 24 hours of access. You won’t receive any notice when your 24 hours are up, so ensure you set a timer. If you don’t want to use the feature at all, you can turn it off on your AT&T account.
It’s worth noting that some of AT&T’s plans already include free roaming in Canada and Mexico, so you don’t need to redeem a day pass when traveling in those countries. Additionally, be aware that AT&T used to have a clause that allows them to turn off the international roaming feature if international was your primary use over a two-month back-to-back period. However, we couldn’t find that language in any of the fine print on their day passes today, so it may no longer be the case.
Compared to T-Mobile, which offers free international roaming on all of its postpaid plans, AT&T’s international day passes are a great option. T-Mobile, however, reduces your data to 128 kilobits per second, with some plans giving you 256 kilobits per second. If you want high-speed data, they offer data buckets with the highest option of 15 gigabytes for $50 as an add-on fee. Verizon also has the day pass option, but it only offers 500 megabytes per day of data usage.
In conclusion, AT&T’s new international day passes make it the best option for international travel among the big three. The feature is effective on July 14th and will significantly reduce the cost of international travel for AT&T postpaid customers.