Current Events

Flight attendant Chuck Harris made a few calls home to New York so plumbers could fix a broken pipe while he was vacationing in the Dominican Republic. To his surprise, he got a bill for $400—not from the plumbers, from the phone company.

John Ellis, an adjunct professor of anesthesiology and critical care at the University of Pennsylvania, returned home from a trip to China to a $2,367 phone bill for downloaded data, even though he carefully tracked his usage. And one Texas A&M University employee got an even bigger welcome home gift after a trip abroad: a $10,000 cellular data bill.

When in roam, be careful with your phone. Smartphones and tablet computers set to automatically update data can trigger hundreds, even thousands, of dollars in expensive roaming charges.

Data plans have become a more expensive travel gotcha than expensive voice-call rates overseas—as high as $5 or more per minute. Even if your phone checks the local temperature, that’ll cost you. AT&T

and Verizon charge up to $20 per megabyte, so uploading a few photos, downloading a few attachments or watching three minutes of YouTube video can easily cost $100; watching a full-length feature movie through an Internet-based service can be an $18,000 show ticket.

“Most people don’t realize how quickly it adds up,” said Walt Magnussen, director of telecommunications at Texas A&M in College Station. Like many companies, the university tries to get international travelers to notify the telecommunications department of overseas trips. Mr. Magnussen’s department then sets up cheaper voice and data plans.

As more cellphones work around the world, travelers often are shocked when they see hefty roaming charges just for turning on a phone and connecting to a foreign network or downloading data. Scott McCartney has the details on The News Hub. Photo: AP.

In the case of the $10,000 bill, Mr. Magnussen said the university employee only did occasional email, but his computer may have been set to update software automatically, triggering huge data charges. The university couldn’t negotiate a break on the bill either, he said.

A Federal Communications Commission survey in 2010 found 1 in 6 mobile users—30 million Americans—had experienced “bill shock,” a sudden and unexpected increase in monthly cellular bills. Out of 764 “bill shock” complaints filed with the FCC in the first half of 2010, 20% were for bills of more than $1,000, and one was for a $68,505 bill.

In October, the FCC got wireless carriers to voluntarily agree to better warn customers of roaming charges. But sometimes those warnings just say you are about to incur roaming charges, without warning as to how high they really are.

The European Commission has proposed limits on voice and data roaming charges that will kick in this summer, subject to approval next month by the European Parliament.

If approved, cellular carriers would be able to charge no more than 70 cents per megabyte for data and 29 cents for outgoing voice calls starting July 1, and those prices would be reduced further over the next two years. The caps apply only to EU customers traveling within the EU. The EU has also mandated automatic alerts to let consumers know when they hit 50 euros (about $65) in data downloading when roaming.

The plan would “immediately bring down prices for data roaming, where operators currently enjoy outrageous profit margins,” Neelie Kroes, European Commission vice president for digital agenda, said in a statement.

Dr. Ellis of Chicago increased his data plan before leaving on an Asian trip because he knew he’d be downloading some data. He kept track of his usage and even got a warning saying he was going to go over his limit. But when the AT&T bill came, “the charges were greatly in excess of what I expected,” he said.

Dr. Ellis complained to AT&T and was able to get the charges reduced to about $500, which he found more reasonable. Since then he’s bought an overseas data plan from AT&T with higher limits for his travels.

An AT&T spokeswoman said international roaming fees “are based on negotiated rates established with each local carrier.”

Mr. Harris, a JetBlue Airways

flight attendant who went to the Dominican Republic for a short vacation in August, said his charges included some data transmission, even though he kept the phone turned off most of the time except to deal with plumbers. Verizon told him his phone was set to update automatically; he argued Verizon did the settings when he picked up the phone.

He called the company to complain and got the $400 worth of charges reduced by only $40. A second call got another $20 cut in the bill. On the third call, “I cried,” Mr. Harris said, but Verizon wouldn’t lower the bill any further.

A spokesman for Verizon said roaming rates reflect negotiated rates with individual countries’ wireless carriers and pointed out that the company began offering a global data plan Wednesday with lower rates—$25 a month for up to 100 megabytes of data in 120 countries.

“It was a bitter experience,” Mr. Harris said. Now he travels with a cellphone capable of working with cheap local SIM cards, the removable card in a handset that contains subscriber data and phone number.

Most phones sold in the U.S. are “locked” into the service of the cellular company that sold the phone. You can get them unlocked, sometimes by paying your phone company for the code. Then you buy a local SIM card for the country you are going to, usually sold cheaply and often with prepaid minutes. Replace your regular SIM card, found in the back of the phone by the battery, with the local one. When you turn on your phone, it doesn’t incur roaming charges.

You can also buy or rent an unlocked phone, and now there are SIM cards with roaming features at far lower rates. That lets you move from country to country without having to get a new SIM card for each place.

“Even savvy travelers get confused,” said Ken Grunski, president of Telestial Inc., one company that sells SIM cards and phones and provides its own global network at reduced roaming rates.

Even with lower rates, Mr. Grunski tells travelers: “People immediately want to send pictures to Aunt Doris, but don’t do it. Wait.”

When in Roam

Some ways to save money on voice and data cellular charges when traveling internationally:

Rent a local-country phone. If you’ll be in one country for an extended period, you may want to get a local phone, either before you go or after you arrive. TravelCell Inc., for example, will rent a phone for Israel for $19.99 a week with free incoming calls and text messages and 100 free minutes of outgoing calls to the U.S. After that, it’s 34.9 cents per minute for calls and 19.9 cents per text message.

Skype. The service offers free video calls over the Internet and cheap voice calls to phones. But be careful: If you use your phone or tablet computer, make sure you’re not running up cellular data charges. If you have access to free or cheap Wi-Fi, though, you’re all set.

Turn off apps, data roaming, fetch data and automatic synching functions on your phone’s settings. Look for anything that looks like automatic updating. Make sure that Facebook isn’t automatically updating or that you don’t have apps checking stock quotes or sports scores constantly.

Get a local Wi-Fi adapter. Renting your own hot spot can be a lot cheaper than hotel Wi-Fi rates, or worse, data charges from your cellular carrier.

See if your cellular carrier has an acceptable plan. AT&T, Verizon and others offer global roaming plans that require a monthly fee but give you reduced rates. Those rates, however, can still be expensive. Instead of $1.39 in France, for example, you might pay 99 cents a minute for voice calls.

Work incoming calls to your advantage. Cellular plans often have discounted rates for incoming calls; hotels often don’t charge for incoming calls made to rooms. So arrange to have people call you from home rather than calling them.

Purchase a removable SIM card that works in an unlocked phone. You can sometimes get the code to unlock your phone from your cellular carrier, or buy or rent an unlocked phone. For example, Telestial Inc.’s Passport SIM card comes with a U.S. and U.K. phone number, with roaming in 180 countries at 49 cents a minute for outgoing calls. Data cost 49 cents per megabyte in 135 countries; incoming calls are free in 75 countries. The card costs $19 but includes $10 of airtime.

Write to Scott McCartney at middleseat@wsj.com

Corrections & Amplifications

John Ellis is an adjunct professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. In an earlier version of this column, Dr. Ellis was misidentified as a University of Chicago professor.

By HAROLD DIETERLE

Justin Walker for The Wall Street Journal, Food Styling by Brett Kurzweil, Prop Styling by DSM

CHOICE CRUSTACEAN | Blue crabs have rich, sweet meat that takes well to light seasoning. Dungeness crab can also be used in this recipe.

BLUE CRAB SEASON IS UNDER WAY and I couldn’t be more excited. I grew up on Long Island, a few miles from the ocean. From April through September, my mother and I had a tradition of weekend crabbing outings. We would wake up early—something I never thought to do on a school day—and head to a local pier such as Babylon Town Dock or Bergen Point. On occasion, my younger sister would join us, but she was usually more interested in playing with friends. I was all about business. On the short ride over, my mother and I would plan our attack, recapping the successful crab spots from our last outing.

The docks served as a spot for older folks in the neighborhood to relax. Some would fish or crab, while others just basked in the sea breeze. I’d come bursting out of the car and get right to work prepping the traps with unappetizing scraps like raw chicken backs and necks, fish heads and bones. I learned to secure the bait tightly in the traps; otherwise the crabs would scamper away with their haul. As for the traps themselves, there were all sorts: triangular ones, box ones and, my favorite, basket-style traps. In addition to being most effective, they were the easiest to prep and pull out of the water.

My mother and I would lay down four to six traps and wait. I was probably the most active person on the dock, pacing back and forth and checking to see which trap would need to be pulled first. I’d say hello to the folks I recognized, fishing net in tow just in case I spotted a wandering crab. These were long days, usually lasting from early in the morning until late in the afternoon. The bounty, small or large, always made it worth it.

“We’d toast a loaf of Pullman bread—Wonder Bread back then, a fresh loaf today—to soak up the crab shells’ juices. ”

A big catch led to a large family meal, almost always prepared by my mother, with all of our nearby relatives, highlighted by pasta with crab gravy. “Gravy” in this case refers to tomato sauce. If my grandparents joined, we would keep the top shells on because they loved eating crab roe—something that I was disgusted by at the time, but am now fond of. The crab gravy would be served with an undressed pasta, usually spaghetti, though I always asked for angel hair. Finished with a showering of fresh basil and Pecorino cheese, the pasta was, and still is, perfection. We’d flank the dish with sides of corn on the cob, a garlic-studded green such as escarole, a balsamic-slicked watercress salad and even some barbecued meat for the non-crab lovers of the family.

If the catch was on the small side, we would opt for an equally delicious main course of garlic-baked blue crabs. We would remove the shells and inedible innards, then briefly oven-bake the crustaceans in a bath of garlic, oregano, olive oil, butter and white wine. The sweet, tender and mildly briny crab meat turned opaque, and the scent of garlic and herbs filled the air. Next to the fresh crabs, we’d toast a loaf of Pullman bread—Wonder Bread back then, a fresh loaf today—to soak up the juices from the crab shells.

At my restaurants, I offer crab dishes that connect to my childhood, but I also like to showcase the versatility of all types of crabs. At Perilla, where the cuisine tends to skew toward Italian-American and Eastern European influences, I serve a spaghettini with crab gravy studded with crushed red chili flakes, fennel seed and Thai basil. It’s a variation on what I grew up with, but it has more aggressive seasoning. I’ll use peekytoe crab meat instead of blue crabs and I’ll create a crab stock with green crabs to enhance the flavor and add more depth—it helps with the umami of the dish.

At my restaurant Kin Shop, which focuses on contemporary Thai food, I’ve started a Monday night crab dinner series, highlighting at least three different species of crab spread over four courses. We’ve made stuffed blue crabs with pork, fried Jonah crab claws and spicy crab noodles with king or Dungeness crab. When soft-shell crab is in season, we’ve served a whole fried one with Thai influences.

When traveling, I’m always drawn to crab dishes I see on a menu. Or better yet, when I am out of town and staying at the home of a friend or family member, I ask the locals where I can get fresh crabs since I enjoy cooking when on vacation.

The absolute key when selecting crab is freshness. If the crabs are lifeless, don’t buy them. You want crabs with at least a little movement left in them, preferably more. And never buy crabs from a fishmonger or store you don’t trust.

To this day, my mother and I still plan crabbing trips when I go back to my hometown. Perhaps our roles have changed slightly, with me taking the reins in the kitchen, but the joy I get from the process sends me right back to my days as a child pacing the dock. I still work with the flavors I grew up with, and can’t wait to get my hands on the tender crab meat as soon as it emerges from the oven. My mother would add the raw ingredients and liquid directly to the top of the cleaned crabs before baking them, whereas I sauté the ingredients to bring out all the flavor and then pour them onto the crabs, but either way works.

—Harold Dieterle was the winner of the first season of “Top Chef.” He is chef and owner of the restaurants Perilla and Kin Shop, both in New York.