What do they want to do?

a) Phone his office whilst travelling to Korea - from the airport, the station, the hotel

Description

A businessman will need to keep in regular contact with his office throughout his trip. Whilst he is travelling phone calls, emails or letters might arrive at the office relating to his trip. The information in these need to be forwarded to him.

Whilst he is travelling he might be reading business proposals and documents and might require further background information or statistics from the office.

He may need to contact the office to seek approval or permission to go ahead with a change in plans.

Most airports and hotels have wi-fi access - sometimes free, sometimes there is a small charge.

Because he is going to be in populated areas he is unlikely to have a need for a satellite telephone

Pros

Because he has a smart phone and a laptop he should be able to phone his office from anywhere whilst on his trip.

He can also keep in contact using text messages which tend to be cheaper than phone calls.

The smart phone could have apps installed that will allow him to send and receive documents and files. For instance, he can use the camera on the smart phone to make an image of any documents, the image can then be made into a pdf file and sent as an attachment in email.

He should also be able to send and receive files from his company using his laptop.

Cons

The biggest implication of making and receiving overseas mobile calls is the cost. If money is tight then the company will be keen to keep down costs. It applies even more for personal calls to family as these may not be re-imbursed by the company.

Costs can mount up very rapidly. This also includes expensive data dowloads. For example it is not unusual to be charged £20 for a 10 minute mobile call. The EU has now put laws in place to cap roaming charges to €0.15 /min for receiving calls and €0.39 /min for making calls. The law also states that the default cut off for data roaming is €50 to avoid unexpected large data roaming bills, but this is only valid within the EU

Because he is in a different time zone, when he needs to make a phone call to the office there might not be anyone there.

Because he is always available via phone or email he may feel that he can't get away from the office or that he is being 'monitored'.

What can he do about it?

An alternative is to use texting as much as possible as texting tends to be free. SMS can be used as a paging system. The text message simply says 'call me' then he uses a convenient land line to make the actual call.

Alternatively, because he has a laptop and probably has access to a wi-fi connection he could use a VOiP service such as Skype to be able to call free-of-charge to another Skype account or pay for the Skype-to-land-line service.

Another alternative is to buy a local SIM card for the journey. These can work out cheaper if the manager intends to make many calls. The downside is that he will be using a different phone number rather than his normal number for the duration of the trip.