Configuring the N900 for GSM roaming

It's common knowledge that you will be charged outrageous amounts of money if you place or receive GSM calls in a foreign network. The same holds if you use GSM (UMTS, 3G, HSPA,...) internet access in a foreign network. For example if you are customer of, say, O2 Germany and you are using, say, O2 UK, you have to pay tons of money for the certainly very complex task of exchanging data between the British and the German branch of O2. (Did you notice the bitter irony? Good. By the way, the other multinational carriers such as Vodafone, Orange, T-Mobile etc. play the same game to rip off their customers.)

Unfortunately my beloved N900 is a real download hog, so just one single turn of going online might easily cost you 20€. Here is a list of tasks you might want to do to reduce your roaming costs:

Warning: Most of this only works before you leave your home!

(Especially configuring the conditional call forwarding has to be done in your home GSM network.)

• Install the following software packets from maemo.org/extras-testing/extras-devel:
  • Starhash enabler (if you intend to buy a foreign prepaid SIM)
  • Call forwarding applet (if you normally use a voicemail box)
  • Personal dataplan monitor (warning: not good for your blood pressure!)
  • WPA key editor (your hotel, restaurant, friend,... might use a format for WPA keys that the N900 for some silly reason does not understand)
  • It is a good idea to install the 3G/2G/dual mode selection applet: It will allow you to switch your mobile to 2G only, which does not just save power, but will also imply smaller download speeds, so you have more reaction time to abort unwanted downloads.
  • You might consider installing some WEP password cracking software if you can estimate the risk of being caught via logfiles, and if you do not have any moral objections (I do have them, so I don't do this and thus can't give you any recommendations). Bear in mind that a WEP encryption, albeit useless, clearly indicates that the owner of the WLAN does not want other people to use his network.
  • Download software that can help you save power (e.g., WLAN switcher); you probably will need this on your trip.
  • You also might want to install photography software such as BlessN900 or Morpho QuickPanorama, unless you will use a real digital camera for picture taking.


• Download the PC software that allows to permanently store Nokia's maps on the N900. Download the maps for the countries you'll be visiting. If you plan to go to a region near the border (e.g., Strasbourg, Salzburg, Trieste, Русе, Охрид,...), then you should download the maps for the neighbouring country as well.


• For reasons beyound my understanding, Nokia/Ovi Maps needs to download a significant amount of data in order to obtain an A-GPS fix (several hundreds of kilobytes!?). Apart from the usually superior accuracy, an external GPS thus probably can save a lot of data volume. I have not yet tried it myself, though.


• Remember to deactivate any conditional call forwarding to your mailbox before you leave your home network, since otherwise you'll pay triple roaming fees: (1) for receiving the call, (2) for forwarding it back to the mailbox in your home country, and (3) lateron for calling your mailbox. If you installed the call forwarding applet as I recommended above, you can deactivate the three conditional forward rules via the system settings. Alternatively, you could have any incoming calls unconditionally forwarded to your mailbox (in which case you might want to change your greeting message accordingly, e.g., to tell people they should send you SMS or e-mail only).


• Fortunately, the European Commission has put a limit on the costs of calls in voice roaming and SMS within the EU countries. Still, you might want to check with your operator if some foreign networks are cheaper. In the old days, I always made me a little table that told me what roaming network to use during which time of day or for SMS or data. Usually this is not needed any longer.


• Check the offers for prepaid SIM cards of the various GSM providers in your destination country. In many cases (but not always), it is worth the effort to buy a cheap prepaid SIM card; this of course will mean that you'll have a different phone number for the time that your N900 has the other SIM card inserted.


• Synchronize your e-mail. Then deactivate automatic e-mail updates when connected via GSM (or at least increase the update interval) via the menu of the e-mail application. Perhaps you might even consider removing unimportant accounts, but then be very careful not to lose any archived e-mails.


• Go to the program manager, update all software. Then deactivate all software catalogues. (This is done via the menu.) I recommend deactivating them, rather than deleting. In any case, this will avoid that your N900 will waste precious megabytes (!) on regular checks for software updates.


• If you use some weather applet on your home screen such as Foreca or OMWeather, set the weather location to your travel destination. Doing the search at home and will save you some kilobytes.
  Alternatively, you might want to remove that applet for the time of your journey, but usually you will need up-to-date weather information during your travel.


• If you intend to use instant messaging, consider creating an additional profile that will log you only into those IM services that you need most, and which preferably sets your status to busy so that you won't get chat messages all the time. This definitely saves you data volume.


• Furthermore you might want to deactivate position updates in your IM account. The same holds for other automatic updates, e.g., what song you're currently listening to.


• Consider selectively activating and deactivating Geotagging for the camera. On the other hand, having correct geotags on every picture is a nice thing to have.


• Deactivate the automatic fallback to GSM/3G when the WLAN becomes unavailable: you will want to control yourself when your N900 goes online (system settings, network connections).

In the future, I might add further points or otherwise improve this post. Last change: 05-Sep-2010