[MartynSinclair]

Unless you are downloading heavy duty, I cant see that EE has value.My 3G copes very well with 95% of emails – those that need something faster, quite frankly, for me, can wait…….

I know some will find EE useful..

[Tim2soza]

Apologies if already covered, but I found out yesterday that 3 offers a European data roaming deal all you can eat for £5 a day. http://www.three.co.uk

[Publiship_Flyer]

O2 charge me £1.99 maximum per day for 25mb of data in Europe. Phone calls cost 50p to connect and then the first 60 minutes come out of my monthly call allowance.

For outside Europe, however, they charge £6/MB for data and calls at £1.20 per minute! I do have a maximum spend of £102.13 for up to 200mb of data for each trip, so at least it’s under control.

As someone else has suggested, I use Onavo Extend on my iphone and it trims down data download considerably, although it can be a bit slower.

[westie11]

I always turn off my mobile roaming but when having my i pad configured for the hotel wi fi in Chennai recently, their so called technician somehow left on my i pad roaming and I got stung by Vodafone £25 a day for retreiving and sending e mails. Word to the wise, do not let anybody try and configure your i pad in an Indian hotel. Whilst I am not really tech savvy I believed I was sufficiently competent to turn this off. We live and learn.

[MartynSinclair]

Trying to work out how a call from Europe to UK costs 0.28p whilst a call UK to UK (outside of free allowance) costs 0.40p,

Perhaps its the UK call charges that need to be reviewed.

(T Mobile – Business 1 package)

Just moved my minutes up by another 1000.

[Binman62]

Just picked up iPhone 4S this week £26 a month unlimited data, texts and 500 minutes…..more than I will ever use. Handset was £69 on t-mobile but car phone warehouse matched and so with help of four square got handset for £39. Good deal

Was looking at the link to one phone which was posted above…now that is interesting. If that works it could be a huge step forward.

[traveller1918]

There’s a great new provider offfering global contracts. One sim for every country – been a godsend for me as I’m forever having to change out sim cards and use different numbers to avoid roaming charges.

http://www.vendome.com.au/luxurymobilephoneservice/

[rferguson]

I recently switched from O2 network to ‘3’ as they offer the most amazing roaming deal called ‘feel at home’. It only works in certain countries – the USA, Australia, Hong Kong and quite a few european countries. As I tend to spend half my life in the US this plan has saved me a HUGE amount of money.

Basically, I pay around £20 per month for a UK sim only plan which includes unlimited calls, texts and data. The amazing thing is though, this allowance continues whilst in a ‘feel at home’ destinations. Yup, if i’m in the US, HK or Australia I can switch my phone on to data roaming and call/text/surf to my hearts content. For no extra charge. Love it!

[cityprofessional]

Hi rferguson… How have you found 3 reception in the UK? (and are you on 3G or 4G) I’ve been tempted by the offer, but nervous re: horror stories of poor reception…

[MartynSinclair]

H RF – many thanks for the info.

My needs are slightly different in that I need overseas calling FROM the UK – which previously was part of my Business One contract with T Mobile. However, currently T Mobile will NOT renew my contract because in their own words “its not making us any money”. They have agreed to allow me a sim only contract, but will not provide a phone upgrade opportunity.

So I am very interested in the 3 offer as I think it will save me significantly with the roaming charges when travelling. I would need

Germany
USA
Thailand

.. to be included to make it worthwhile..

Will also wait until cityprofessional has had his question answered.

Many thanks

[rferguson]

Cityprofessional – I totally hear you and like you vowed NEVER to go to 3 network again (I joined them about ten years ago when they first started and they were dreadful). However, this deal for me was just too much to not give it a go so I decided to give 3 a second chance. I also made sure I only took out a monthly rolling plan so I could cancel quick smart if they were still rubbish. Thankfully, the 4G service has been outstanding – though I must admit I live in London so not sure how their UK-wide coverage is. Their call centre is in India and has also improved significantly. They are very friendly and efficient and i’ve never waited more than a minute to be dealt with – and most importantly they’ve been able to resolve any issue i’ve had on the spot.

Martynsiclair – absolutely the 3 deal won’t suit everyone. I spend a HUGE amount of time in the US so being able to use my phone there as if in the UK without switching sims/numbers etc etc is just amazing.

[lifeontheroad]

Hello all, my first post here but finally I thought I could add something valuable…

My frequent travel within the music business means I rarely make a short business trip but spend the majority of my time away from home, so simply turning off data roaming is not really an option in order to stay in touch with loved ones and business contacts.

What I have noticed in recent years is hotel wifi is almost always included free of charge. We tell our travel agent it is a must and as we are generally booking between 10 and 30+ rooms it seems hotels are willing the waive the charge as otherwise they will lose the booking.

I switched from O2 to EE last year as they offer a roaming package where in you can use your phone for voice and texts ‘like home’ similar to that mentioned by rferguson in approx 60 countries worldwide. Roaming is dealt with in Zones and typically within the countries in the list you are capped at £25 per month. However where they sting you is when you are outside of there ‘preferred’ countries. Japan and South Africa have been recent examples where both the data roaming and voice/text charges have been extortionate. The base charge for this contract is £46 PCM over 24 months using a new Blackberry handset. I have a 3 sim card in my tablet which I pay £15 PCM for 10GB of data on a rolling contract and I can confirm the above, the like home service and 4G converge in the UK is very good.

I find it is a never ending battle, and whilst my EE bills come in at around £150 PCM compared to £250 previously on O2 when this contract expires I will definitely be hunting out a better deal. I have a US sim and whilst useful for local calls and data I can still never turn off my UK number. I’m sure many other feel the same way.

[LuganoPirate]

I use http://www.operatorone.com which is very easy to set up, and costs a very reasonable €0.02 per minute from south africa to Europe. It does need a local SIM card though but these are easily obtainable at most airports. Once you have an account it’s easy to use the same service from other countries but always using a local SIM.

If I need data I then buy a local package, for example, with Vodacom here in SA a 1gb data costs R. 99 or about £12. To compare, Virgin cost £4 for just 1mb and Swisscom CHF 12 for 50mb!

And lifeontheroad, to get round the problem of roaming and not turning off my mobile. I leave the phone on, don’t answer the call and ring them back. Much cheaper.

[Tom Otley]

Since this one keeps coming back, I’ll plug our latest review on the subject

http://www.businesstraveller.com/tried-and-tested/technology/100851/truphone

[LifestyleTraveler]

I travel extensively and used T-Mobile prior. It was great when I traveled to Canada and Mexico but once I started reaching further territories it got expensive. I switched to AT&T due to service issues with T-Mobile before they expanded and that was even worse. I just resort to the wifi and turned off all cellular and data.

About 2 years ago the wife recommended a wireless prepaid company she was using. The guy there was great in providing foreign SIMs for use overseas. I have been using it the past year and half with little issue. For $22/mo I get free roaming, unlimited talk text and web (international as well). I pay $0.20/min for calls inbound and outbound which works great and free texts back to the US. Depending on location I do believe for like $10 more it was free calling to/from select countries like UK and France. I travel mostly Europe and South America for work. I believe the provider he gave me is on the T-Mobile network but the plans are great. I know its a private company with a select clientele as we are invoiced for about 15 phones each month. I believe they only market to businesses. Hope that helps.

[Author]

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