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I saw your post and I ended up making an account to offer my experience.
You could opt for the Global Data Plan that VZW offers. When I recently traveled to Japan, I used it and it helped me out. I used it for largely for sending out occasional emails to communicate with family/friends instead of making phone calls. The cost of the plan might vary depending on the country you travel to, but for me it was $25/100MB of data. I was told that getting this plan would not affect my current plan (unlimited data with no contract).
That said, BE VERY CAREFUL with your usage if you're cost-conscious. I'm pretty sure I kept my cellular/data usage minimal and also checked my online account to see how much data I was using. I thought that I would only pay $25 for my trip based on the estimate... It turns out that VZW's "estimate" on your account page isn't isn't accurate at all. I got a text message during a day out saying that I had gone over my initial allotment of 100MBs (see first pic and the timestamp). I logged in later that day to see how much data I had used but as you can seen from the screenshot below, I'm still within 100MB (again, make sure to note the timestamp). I called the toll free VZW support and the data usage estimate they provided me was something like 99+MBs used, which was much more of an estimate than what showed up on my account.
To say the least, I was very disappointed. They didn't offer me any sort of compensation and barely made any sort of apology for this gross underestimate. And to make matters worse, it seems that VZW has a more accurate means of tallying your data usage estimate (since the customer service rep could pull up more accurate usage statistics), but they displayed an "estimate" that was close to 80MB off the actual usage on your account webpage.
Would I use this Global Data Plan again? No. I will be doing more homework before my next trip abroad and I'd rather borrow a phone at the airport at a higher cost than go through this type of frustration.
