If you are taking a 2-week holiday then you might actually be doing it to purposely be out of touch with your clients and business partners. And if you do want to stay in touch then email and an international roaming plan for your mobile will do the trick. But for the group of us who are working on the road as a lifestyle, the communication thing can be a bit tricky.

Email will always be a free and easy way of communicating with many people, but there are times when you need a voice call in real time to move forward. These days there are many ways to make and receive a call, and some of them are free or incredibly cheap. If you’ll be working on a laptop most of the time then you’ll have quite a few choices. Also, while timezone differences can also be a problem, they can also be a big help in other ways.

1. Do you even need a phone?

Sometime in the 1990s, pretty much everyone got a mobile phone, and since then millions of people have ditched their landlines so it seemed like the mobile was part of a new 1-to-1 phone-to-person ratio. But when you are traveling, especially many time zones away from the people you’d speak to, it’s very possible that a phone (or at least phone service) won’t be worth the small benefit you’ll receive.
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