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During three and a half weeks in New Zealand, JOHN HARRIS discovered that he struggles to afford the high price of supporting his road warrior delusions.

During the past 20 years, I’ve fancied myself as a bit of a digital dilettante who dabbles with the latest devices and picks the best of the crop to help me out.

So, when I packed my bags for New Zealand last month, I included my iPhone, a spare mobile phone, my notebook and a USB mobile data modem loaned to me by Vodafone.

My idea was to use the iPhone to respond to any urgent work-related issues during the daytime while free broadband at motels would let me answer non-urgent questions overnight.

Generally speaking, December is a great month to escape the office. The phone stops ringing and projects slow down as customers try to clear their own desks in order to get away from work for a few days around Christmas and New Year.

But, as an owner-operator, I have to keep an eye on things in case an emergency crops up.

Telecommunications has made this a lot easier during the past few years.

Global roaming calls and email access via iPhone keep me in touch without much of a fuss. Remote access software lets me access the office network from anywhere with broadband.

Because making calls overseas from an Australian mobile can cost an arm and a leg, when I arrived in Christchurch, I bought a prepaid $35 Vodafone SIM for my spare mobile for local calls.

This let me reserve the iPhone for only calls forwarded from my office and for monitoring email.

However, my well-laid plans began to fall apart when I arrived at the Christchurch motel.

While its free WiFi worked wonderfully, it required me to enter a 16-digit access code every two hours: This meant repeatedly trudging to reception in the middle of the night for a new code.

Further down the road, in Dunedin, the motel had the same system, except it sensibly issued a 24-hour access code.

In the mountain lake town of Wanaka, I got to use the USB modem, which gave me broadband access via Vodafone’s mobile data network. While the Australian SIM would not work at all, the unit fired up when I inserted the Kiwi SIM from my mobile phone.

Unfortunately, it chewed through $50 worth of credits in a couple of hours. When I recharged the card at the Vodafone office, I discovered they offered broadband access for just $5 an hour, so for the rest of the week, I just popped in there with my notebook when I needed to clear email.

During daylight hours, I had several urgent calls or emails during the first 10 days of the trip, after which work-related correspondence was replaced by a wave of Christmas-related spam. About a week before Christmas, I turned off the iPhone’s email reception.

The bottom line is that the price of my self-appointed role as digital road warrior racked up phone charges of more than $1000 during my 24 days in the Shaky Isles.

While I felt happy at only spending about $200 in local pre-paid phone and data charges during the trip, reality slapped me in the face when I got back to Australia.

Optus had charged me $804 in roaming data charges to keep my iPhone up to date with the latest and greatest forms of spam.

I am now going back to writing letters – if I can afford the stamps.

John Harris is managing director of Impress Media Australia. You can view his website at www.johnharris.net.au.

 

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