RyanTaylor.Me

I’ve been travelling a fair bit over the past few years, enough to find that the cost of (tele)communication can add as much to a trip as upgrading to a quality hotel. It is hard enough owning your own business without the worry & hassle of phone cards and wifi hotspots, so I’ve written this tutorial to help other Canadians like myself avoid the insanely overpriced roaming packages and get back to enjoying our work.

Most of the content refers to travelling within the USA but it works for international plans as well.

Let’s start with the plan. *Best thing to do is find an AT&T booth and buy a GO Phone SIM, they’ll install and set-up your account. (Go Phone is a new service which for $60 you get unlimited talk and text). I used my hotel address as my ‘home’ which is fine but you will need to order pre-paid cards to refill or use a US (prepaid) credit card (I’ll give some options further down.) You may be able to find one online but most of the time they are bundled with phones. If your trip is only a few days you may choose to just recharge w/ a regular pay as you go top-up.

*This was true of Vodaphone in the UK as well, setting your account up in person is much less hassle than over the phone. Sales people want the sale so they’ll always find a way to sort any problems out.

This tutorial should work on all CDN iPhones bought from Apple w/o a carrier subsidy or most unlocked iPhones.

Let’s begin. Your SIM should be in your phone but you wont have 3G or data service even if you paid for it, so let’s resolve that. Here’s a great post I found while trying to solve the data problem, the network reset I figured out by being reckless.

Over-the-Air Provisioning

However, there is a workaround for this problem that can be done easily and without any jailbreaking or other “phone hacking.” You can do this by taking advantage of a legitimate, built-in part of the iPhone OS called “over-the-air provisioning.” Over-the-air provisioning allows you to change certain otherwise inaccessible phone settings (such as the data network).

You can use this process with an original iPhone, iPhone 3G or iPhone 3GS. According to the site, the process works with iPhone OS 2.x, 3.x, and 4.x. I tested it with an iPhone 3G running iPhone OS 3.1.3.

My experience was on iOS 4.01 with a JailBroken/Unlocked iPhone 3GS 32GB.

For Canadians: once you have replaced your Rogers SIM for the AT&T you MUST at this point navigate to Settings>General> Scroll to the bottom and >Rest>Reset Network Settings. Your phone will restart and drop all your saved wifi passwords as well as the Rogers network settings (don’t worry we can get em back). Once complete ‘3G’  should now appear beside the AT&T network badge.

The Steps

Step 1: Open Safari on the iPhone that you wish to use with the GoPhone data plan and navigate to unlockit.co.nz and then tap “Continue”

Step 2: Tap the “Custom APN” button

Step 3: Select your carrier. You will see a pop-up menu with settings for carriers all over the world. Since you are using a GoPhone in the U.S., you will need to navigate down to “US – AT&T.” Once you select AT&T, the other fields will automatically get filled in with the proper data.

Step 4: Tap the “Create Profile” button. This will generate your custom APN profile and download it to your phone.

I couldn’t download to my phone so I chose the email option, installed from the email attachment, worked fine.

Step 5: A screen will pop up on your phone informing you about the new profile and asking if you want to install it. Go ahead and tap “Install” and then “Replace” in the subsequent dialog

Step 6: You should see a “Profile Installed” screen. This means your new profile has been installed successfully

To test your data plan (note this will use some of your prepaid account), you’ll need to turn off Wi-Fi and confirm you are on the AT&T network (look for the the Edge or 3G text on the upper left corner of the screen). Launch Safari and navigate to a favorite web site. The initial connection time might take a few extra moments, but you should see the website load. If this doesn’t work, you might need to reboot the phone for the new profile to fully take effect.

Returning your phone to previous settings is easy. Simply open the Settings app on the phone, tap “General” and scroll to the bottom. You will see a “Profile” setting which you can tap to view the details of the installed profile, and there is also a red “Remove” button which will allow you to delete the profile and return your phone’s APN settings to the default.

As a side note, this same process works for other carriers around the world. While this tutorial is written for U.S. GoPhone users, if you are in another country with a SIM from another carrier, you should be able to use these same steps to change the APN for your non-AT&T carrier. However, your phone will have to be either already compatible with the carrier of your choice or unlocked.

Originally Posted: http://ftj.co/3Q0l

You should now have phone + data on your device, but what happens when you need to top up?! Well just like having a US iTunes account the best way to hack this is to use pre-paid cards. I bought from two services but CallingMart (<— yes that is a referral link) was the most flexible on payment and emailed the number rather than mailing a physical card.

**WARNING** Your 1st transaction will be held for approval, this seems to be the standard protocol for these suppliers. Just avoid waiting until you’re at $0 credit…. like I did.

Tip: Check their Twitter account @callingmart for discount codes… like I didn’t.

So now you should have a US number, a SIM, a source for Pay As You Go codes ready to be used anytime you travel.

I’ll add one more optional step by suggesting that you should add *Google Voice to your number. This will allow you to choose a permanent number (I grabbed one in NYC) and allow you to have unlimited US/Canada talk and text as well as transcribed voicemail and all the other cool things Google offers. (*You must be in the USA to set this up.)

That’s it, happy travels! Aloha.

So I did the unthinkable.

I did something no one admits to: I didn’t even make an attempt to vote in a recent by election in Toronto Center. Actually, I consciously chose to not exercise my democratic right as a citizen to cast a vote for any of the given candidate. Then I admitted to it.

The response was, well, swift. A barrage of Twitter voices rained down public condemnation. Words like “disgusting”, “outrage”, “sad”, “unpatriotic”, etc. flooded in. I was all alone, defending my action to some of the most vocal proponents of voter malaise and of course partisan happy clappers. At the same time I was also receiving email, IM’s, and direct messages from others admitting they’d done the same. I was now a confessional for the quiet majority. And if 23% was indeed voter turnout then this sustained intellectual guilt offensive isn’t working friends.

Let’s be clear about something, I am an engaged citizen, but apathetic. And judging by the honest and direct response(s) I received, others are to.

So let me re-introduce the elephant in the room and ask that we start a new conversation without militant foamers ranting about what my/our patriotic rights are and are not. Because this apathy is infectious and volatile. My action may have gotten up the nose of a few people, but I can now openly engage a very large group of citizens in this dialogue without an agenda. (The spoiled ballot argument is a different conversation).

The worst part of my decision was not in ‘renouncing’ my voice, but the knowledge that my community would (initially) be disappointed: Meegs, Ian ,Mark ,Shawn - the people who have inspired and made citizen engagement exciting for me w/o any partisan colours. And the reason why I cared enough to write this post.

So why did so many of us (the majority) not vote in the Toronto Center by election? (Past results: http://www.elections.on.ca/en-CA/Tools/PastResults.htm) I have no idea. But I do know that the cure to our voter apathy is in citizen/community self-organization and engagement (like my experience with those mentioned previously) — not personal brands, lawn signs or buttons.

As citizens we need to speak to each other and identify our collective priorities and solutions rather than continue be lazy (yes lazy) and have a few (strong) voices influence polices and platforms. It is here that that we will feel our voice again giving our votes purpose. Because if “they” still don’t listen, then new leaders will emerge from the community to run as strong independent alternatives who better reflect the community mandate, rather than continue our great Canadian tradition of flogging solutions, shoe horned into tired political brands.

I’ll see you at GevilCamp ChangeCamp, flask in tow.
I’ve set up a confessional, what do you think? Results will be shared at ChangeCamp http://rypple.com/ryantaylor/vote