The high cost of roaming with your mobile phone
August 5th, 2008 by Tim Uden
There’s a good chance that you’re one of more than 90% of backpackers who wouldn’t dream of travelling without their mobile phone.
In most cases you’ll simply stick in a local SIM card and email people your new number. It is generally the cheapest way to go as long as your phone is unlocked (not locked into your home network). But let’s look at the alternative: roaming.
Roaming
Roaming works by forwarding your calls from your home network to a partner network in the country you are travelling in. Because your call is being forwarded, you are slugged with an overpriced international charge for all incoming calls and any calls you make are often priced higher than what a local customer would pay.
For instance, let’s say you are an O2 customer (on a contract) in the UK and you take your mobile to Australia. O2’s standard roaming charges mean that you would pay 85p per minute for a call within Australia or home to the UK and £1.30 per minute to receive a call.
It works the same in the opposite direction. An Australian on contract with Optus travelling in the UK would have to pay AUD $1.50 per minute to call within the UK, AUD $3.30 per minute to call home to Australia and AUD $1.17 per minute to receive a call.
On a two-week trip a typical traveller would make 20 three-minute local calls, 10 10-minute calls back home and receive 40 five-minute calls. That would cost our British traveller in Australia £396 and our Australian traveller in the UK AUD $654.
There is no doubt about it; roaming is expensive. However some mobile phone companies advertise deals where you can save on roaming charges. Are these promotions a good deal or not?
There are several mobile phone companies with an international presence and you would expect that you would get a good deal if you roam in a country where your phone company at home also owns a network. However this is only the case with Three, although Vodafone customers may save some money.
Three Like Home
Three operate in Australia, Austria, Denmark, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Macau, Sweden and the United Kingdom, and their Three Like Home promotion means that Three’s customers can use their phone on other Three networks (although Three Indonesia doesn’t participate in the promotion) without any additional roaming charges. In other words, a Three customer in Australia can travel to the UK and be charged (almost) the same as if they were at home.
With the Three Like Home promotion, there is no charge for receiving calls, calls home are charged like a local call at home and you can usually use additional Three features such as free Skype calls.
Be sure that you check the fine print before signing up with Three as the details of the promotion differ slightly depending on which country you live in. For instance Australian Three customers travelling abroad get local rates both for calls in the country they are travelling in and for calls home, while UK Three customers travelling abroad only get local rates for calls back to the UK. However UK customers can use their inclusive minutes while travelling abroad but Australian customers can not.
Customers on a contract can take better advantage of the offer than prepaid customers and you need to be aware that it only works when you are on the network owned and operated by Three and not any local partner network. Be careful if you are a Three customer in Ireland or the UK and planning on travelling in Australia, since Three’s Australian network is restricted to just a handful of the bigger cities. If you travel off the Three network, then you are up for the excessive roaming charges that you intended to avoid.
Vodafone Traveller & Vodafone Passport
Vodafone operates networks in 20 countries with a minority ownership in another eight. This means that Vodafone’s worldwide network covers Australia, New Zealand and most of Europe. Unfortunately they don’t offer the same sort of deal as Three. However they do have some deals that are intended to soften the blow.
In Australia Vodafone have recently been advertising their Vodafone Traveller service, which is supposed to cut the cost of roaming, however on closer inspection it is not the same sort of deal that is offered by Three.
The Vodafone Traveller deal basically a simplified roaming plan that charges (Australian customers) AUD $1 per minute to receive a call and the cost of making a call is equivalent to the customers regular call charges plus an additional AUD $1 to AUD $4 connection fee. Becasuse you still have to pay to receive calls it is hardly the sort of deal that their advertising makes it out to be and certainly nothing like the Three Like Home promotion.
Using the earlier example, our Australian traveller in the UK would end up paying over AUD $354 if they were a Vodafone customer. Considering that this is promoted as a way to save money roaming, it is not a very good deal although it is better than conventional roaming.
Vodafone’s UK customers have a similar deal called Vodafone Passport where you are charged a 75p connection fee plus whatever your regular call charges would have been if you had made the same call from within the UK. Like the Vodafone Traveller deal, customers on this plan are still charged for incoming calls.
There are a few differences between Vodafone Traveller and Vodafone Passport, namely that Vodafone Passport is limited to fewer countries (mostly countries where Vodafone have their own network).
If our British traveller in Australia (from the earlier example) was a Vodafone Passport customer he would pay £203. That is a fairly good saving but it is nowhere near as cheap as the Three Like Home deal.
Other networks
We have already seen what Three and Vodafone are doing, but what about other mobile phone companies with an international reach like Claro, Orange, Singtel, Telefónica and T-Mobile?
I looked at the websites of these other companies and could find any similar deals. It is a pity since a cross-border plan with Claro would be ideal for travelling around Latin America and T-Mobile’s coverage across Europe and in the United States would make travel much less complicated (and probably convince a few more people to sign up for 24 month contracts) if only they let their customers benefit from their international reach.
4 Responses to “The high cost of roaming with your mobile phone”
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January 8th, 2009 at 11:29 pm
Another alternative is to rent a local SIM card/handset for the durtation of your trip from a company like Cellhire (www.cellhire.co.uk). They have a large range of local SIMs for most countries and also provide satellite phone rental (Thuraya, Iridium and BGAN) for more remote places. You can forward your normal number to this phone so you don’t need to give out a new number, most incoming calls are FREE and they deliver it your day. Plus you get 24 support manned by humans. Can’t say fairer really.
January 21st, 2009 at 12:28 am
I didn’t mention SIM card rental as it is one of the most expensive options.
For example Cellhire charges £5 per week plus a £15 setup fee for an Australian SIM card. Why pay that when you can buy a SIM card in Australia for $2 (around £1) from virtually any service station or supermarket?
January 22nd, 2010 at 6:04 pm
I wouldn’t suggest SIM card rental, there are plenty of mobile phone deals that lean towards international calling. Lebara and SIM4Travel are great options.
January 22nd, 2010 at 6:06 pm
Actually, some SIM-only deals also great!