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.