Sometimes I dream about the days when it was OK to be out of touch, off-line and out to lunch. Back in the 1980s, before the age of mobile phones, when you were out, you were off limits.

Marathon boozy lunches or clandestine trips to the pub were a cinch, since nobody could track you down.

Holidays were really relaxing, because there was no 24-hour rolling news, no wifi, no internet, no email, no texts, no Facebook, no You Tube and no Twitter.

Whatever was happening back at the office was their problem, not yours.

Fast forward to now and we’re wired-into and switched-on to everything pretty much around the clock.

We spend too much time texting and worry more about losing our iPhones than our purses.

I mention this not just because I fancy a moan but to make the point that smart phones can be a drain on our psyche and our pocket, if we let them.

Luckily, Dave Millett of independent telecoms consultants Equinox, has plenty of tips to beat the mobile phone operators at their own game.

* It’s true that roaming charges in Europe have fallen dramatically but countries in the rest of the world usually have no limit on cost, so watch out because operators have hiked their prices there, to off-set the reduced profits here.

Most smart phones are data-hungry, so download an app that will compress your data and keep the bill down.

* Consider buying local pay-as-you-go sims and always look for free wifi. If you are going to use it a lot, there are free apps that act as automated calling cards which will really cut your call costs.

* Few providers will tell you at the end of the contract if there is any handset fund left and even fewer will give it back, so it’s worth finding out what their policy is on this before you sign the contract.

* Remember, the phone isn’t free – you are paying for it in every monthly payment.

What makes mobile companies really happy, is when the contract ends but you don’t notice and the same payment carries on, long after the phone has been paid for.

A recent report found that £1bn is wasted on payments for phones that had already been bought.

* Operators love to keep you in a contract and stop you reviewing your options. They’ll often come back to you half-way through a 24-month contract and persuade you to sign for another 24 months.

In return, you’ll be given a hardware fund or handset upgrade.

But this means you never reach the contract end, when you can genuinely compare your tariff to what’s on offer in the marketplace.

* The industry heavily promotes unlimited calls and texts-style packages which sound attractive but actually, you are almost always going to be paying over-the-odds, because the price is set at a level that 80 per cent of us will never reach.

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