Can I use iMessage for free with someone in a different country?

dj,

That is good to know. Have you ever turned off wi-fi and used your cellular data instead? I'd like to know if your carrier charges you for the iMessage? I will be travelling with a +44 number on my sim card (Teletial based in the Channel Islands I believe) and some places like South Korea & Japan charge about $30USD/MB. ( or 19 GBP/MB). The devil is in the detail. 😉

I have the same question, but the answers I get are different.

Someone said it will cost you ($/MB) if you use iMessage away from a wi-fi hotspot and rely on your cellular provider. I also got the impression that iMessage was only available in North America not other countries.

If so, then iMessage is not exactly free and it is not worldwide.

Does anyone have the facts? Has someone actually used iMessage in the UK or Asia, and can answer this question based on first hand experience.

Welcome to the Apple Support Communities

iMessage is completely free

Yes, you can use it with someone in a different country absolutely free. Note that you can also use it to send photos or videos free.

I use iMessage in the UK. It works fine. It is for sending messages to someone using AppleID over wifi or data instead of sending an SMS text.

Hi Suzanne,

Here is a link with some vital iMessage info. Pay specific attention to the first item under the Notes section. It indicates when you would be subject to carrier rates....

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3529

Hope this helps!

Cheers,

GB

Suzanne515 wrote:

dj,

That is good to know. Have you ever turned off wi-fi and used your cellular data instead? I'd like to know if your carrier charges you for the iMessage? I will be travelling with a +44 number on my sim card (Teletial based in the Channel Islands I believe) and some places like South Korea & Japan charge about $30USD/MB. ( or 19 GBP/MB). The devil is in the detail. 😉

My carrier, 3, does not charge extra for cellular data. I pay £34 per month for a cellular plan with unlimited data. So, no, I do not get charged for sending iMessages whether I am on cellular data or wifi. If I were to try to send an iMessage to an international number that did not belong to an Apple device, it would send as SMS and I am sure that standard international rates would apply. Apple iMessage is a different protocol for users with an AppleID. There is no way for the carrier to distinguish it from any other data traffic.

I and the rest of my family (in UK) use iMessage and my parents who are in Malaysia. All of us have some level of internet usage in our package varying from 500MB to unlimited. iMessage uses this and there is no problem with that. When one of them had used up their quota of internet and could no longer use to it via 3G, we had to text them by using sms rather than iMessage - type in an iMessage and then press the message again and say 'send by sms/text' - this time green instead of blue.

The problem starts when you are in a different country. When this is the case, data usage costs are high and iMessage then is perhaps not so good. However, equally expensive are telephone calls and texts (both to send and receive) when you are away from your home country.

Thanks Rapha el & everyone,

I have managed to test the +44 SIM card and it does work, with a bit of difficulty.

I got the message: "Could not activate cellular data network. PDP authentication failure."

By changing carriers it eventually worked.

Other messages i received were: "Cannot Send Mail", and "Verification Failed".

Obviously something is not set up properly for an iPad. Most instructions relate to the iPhone, and there seems to be a few incompatibility issues that I will have to figure out.

Thanks for all your help!

P.S. The test message I sent was 11KB, but the cellular service provider charged me for 200KB @ $2.99/MB for a grand total of $0.60. People must get charged for all the other bites & bytes that are used to send messages, not only the content of your file. This may be of interest to someone new to this stuff.