Spot on Darren, roaming costs have been outrageous for years. Fees from banks were reigned in a lot so I see no reason why the same thing shouldn’t be done with mobile operators.

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Agreed. Though EU legislation has had a dramatic impact on bringing down the cost of voice calls and SMS messages. I imagine the cost of downloading etc in EU markets will be legislated in similar fashion… One of the few genuine advantages of the EU I can think of!

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**disclosure** I work for a company that sells international roaming to customers in North America.

First off, you should know that you have much better voice/data plans over the EU to begin with. What I wouldn’t do for the unliminted in-country data place you currently have. In Canada, we pay upwards of 20,30 or even $40 dollars for capped plans at around 4GB/month.

The other thing is that I believe that consumers in the EU are much more aware of unlocking phones and swapping SIMs than people in North America. Here, only about 5 to 10% of phones are sold unlocked but that number is higher than 60% elsewhere in the world. What this means is that we tend to buy a locked phone, the operators inserts the SIM and we never even know that we can unlocked or how to unlock, let alone that it is really the SIM that makes it run so the idea of swapping a SIM is much more popular in Europe.

And I believe that EU did legislate caps on roaming charges back in 2009
http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/09/880

Country specific SIMs are great but one draw back is that you only get your number once you get the SIM and activate, and sometimes you might have trouble finding a place to load airtime. In addition, you will often pay high roaming charges if you leave the country you bought the SIM card in. For those reasons, international SIMs are great for people who travel to multiple countries instead of just one country and I think that is an important point to make.

A national news program in Canada recently had a contest to find the worst cell bill in the country. Sadly, some of the worst ones involved roaming charges. In most cases, the operators reduced the charges and acted as if they were doing the customer a favor when the charges we have here in Canada and in fact, all of North America are quite ridiculous to begin with.

More info on that story here:
http://www.cbc.ca/marketplace/2010/canadas_worst_cellphone_bill/main.html

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Darren

Could not agree more on my recent trip to the USA the bill came to just over £200 because we used the wrong network (not that we had any choice as it was the only network in that area). Yet I could use family’s phones and did when I found out.

One example; A call that cost me £19 on my phone was made 2 days latter on families phone (lasting 1 minute longer) cost under $2… So how can a mobile company justify the cost?

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Couple of points:

1. Getting an unlocked phone and inserting a local SIM is the #1 piece of advice to give anyone. It’s easy and cheap everywhere in Europe, and most GSM networks outside. For example, unlimited data (with a fair use cap) costs €2 a week on the TIM network in Italy. (For primarily this reason, I bought a Nexus One *not* an iPhone. Network-locked smartphones are hopeless for regular travellers.)

2. Here’s a short piece I wrote in the Telegraph on cheap mobile phone calls from abroad, much still relevant.

3. On data roaming specifically, this *is* going to get cheaper. The EU has mandated wholesale (network-to-network) charges to come down significantly in 2010 and again in 2011. It will then of course be up to those networks to pass savings on to us. Details here

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Darren

big problem for oz travelers too, given huge os roaming costs, i too learnt the hard way when in uk last year.

i’ve been travelling in asia for a month, and this time i turned off “data roaming” and only used wireless to access web via iphone.

for phone calls i connect to a wireless network then use skype every time. when strong wireless connection great quality voice. made 3 hours of calls to oz, eu, us and spent just US$10.

luckily oodles of free wireless connection in asia especially starbucks, most hotels and many bars. i was even able to tweet live about crackdown in bangkok.

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just came across this, i just bought an i phone and travelling from the uk to nyc and following a week of working (checking emails) even with a roaming packaging i’ve been hit with a bill for over $2000 that i just can’t afford to pay!! My bill is normally around 30-40 per month, not one call to let me know my bill was at the crazy level…..is there anything I can do? i’ve tried Orange, who are not backing down, and I don’t really know what else i can do…!

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if your asking for the whole amount to be credited, then not likely. maybe you can put argument for part credit.

i just had $500 with of international roaming billed from two days in sing, coz i only just learned about turning data roaming off.

so i rang phone company (telstra) after 40mins on phone and 4th person they finally agreed to give a 50% credit.

if all else fails then you could cancel the contract and just dont pay it. tell them if they take you to court that you will bring a huge orange placard protesting the rip off! sounds like fun.

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I work for a company which provides international calls to people’s landlines and mobiles. We always advise our customers to obtain a local SIM card if they are staying abroad for any length of time, to avoid getting hit by (often hidden) roaming charges by their home network provider.

If you will only be abroad for a short while it’s worth remembering that inbound roaming charges are often around a third of the cost of outbound roaming. In addition, if your friend back home calls you (rather than you calling them) they will only be billed for a call to your normal phone number. The network aren’t able to bill for an international call as the number your friend is dialing is technically domestic (despite being on the other side of the world).

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We offer a service for international travellers coming to the UK and Europe, but I think there is no similar service in the US where you can actually rent a smartphone and pay local rates. The problem in the US the lack of national coverage, we are lucky here that the networks are national. Buying a cheap PAYG phone is a limited alternative, for example you lose the functionality like the twitpic and flickr uploads and, well all the features that we have grown to use regularly that are not just basic text and phone.

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