@peterdoo, calling the data roaming packages disappointing is far from normal. I have a business contract in Austria for my mobile and they charge me EUR 50 for 1 GB roaming data. When I leave my house and walk down the road for 200m to cross the Swiss boarder, the cheapest offer for 1 GB domestic data (not roaming) is around CHF 15 (12 Euros).

I live in Austria, do Business in Switzerland and Germany so I have two phones (AT & CH) always with me and when I go to Germany, I have a prepaid card too for cheap calls and data.

All this comes to an end now, because I only need one Simcard for all of that. I would rather call that sensational!

I do not know, whether you have tested Toggle already. As far as I understand, Toggle still charges 840 EUR per 1 GB data in Austria (0,67GBP/MB verifyed by me in june 2014). Data roaming packages do not apply to Austria. If you plan to use Toggle SIM only, you might soon change your mind ;)

If you read reports from ChrisNeedsToKnow, who seems to often use it in the countries you mention, you will see that with the Toggle SIM a change between the countries is not always as smooth as one would expect. Also, having many identities on the SIM means that in the case of bad coverage, the phone has to circle through all of them, causing longer intervals without network coverage than using a normal SIM.

As I mentioned below, in the last months more and more often the call from a Toggle country is delivered without a caller number to the destination (EU mobile or fixed) and with a reduced voice quality (delay, noise, echo). This makes me impossible to reach many people that have a line configured in a way that does not accept anonymous calls. Due to the lower quality it takes longer to finish the discussions. Unfortunatelly the move towards a lower quality seems to be coming with the lower tariffs. I noticed it sometimes with Alditalk (4s delay).

And finally, all calls/SMS, it does not matter from which country, are delivered presenting the UK number to the destination. Many friends business partners hate me for that. Some of them returned me a call to that number instead of using my local Toggle number from their phone directory without thinking about it being an international call which does not enter into their monthly allowance. Extremelly high bills have been received on their end at the end of the month.

For somebody really only needing Toggle countries and taking precautions to avoid the possible problems mentioned, it still is a good offer. In my case of being in the Toggle countries mostly, but traveling also to non-Toggle countries (Austria, Italy,...) various days in a month, it simply makes more sense to use Alditalk DE, Orange ES or vodafone IT for data roaming.

@peterdoo, thank's for your very detailed report. All you are mentioning does make perfect sense and I can agree to most of it. Since I live in Austria, I have a contract with 3GB local data. What I am looking for is the convenience of not having to change the phone when going to a other country.

I've bought a Aldi-Talk Sim on Tuesday during my stay on the German shoreline of lake constance. During my trip to very remote places in Scotland this may I have encounterred, that O2 has a very bad coverage so I will try the german Aldi (Medion Mobile) Sim in September.

BK

@bourbonkiller
Expect O2 to become AldiTalk's/eplus preferred - or maybe even only - roaming partner for the UK as Telefónica O2 Germany is in the process of acquiring eplus which will very likely result in all eplus subscribers (including all the MVNOs) to roam on Telefónica's networks at some point. So with an AldiTalk SIM you will perhaps have the same coverage as with toggle.
Unfortunately I didn't take notice which network I roamed on with my AldiTalk SIM last month when I was in London and used it all the day.

Be aware that you can overcome so-called steering of roaming by trying to register on an certain alternative network four times consecutively. You find out if a network is indeed blocked (no roaming agreement in place) or if you are just steered onto another network by the time your registration attempt takes. If you immediately receive a message like "network blocked", then it is indeed blocked, if it just takes ages to register and times out in the end, your home operator tries to steer you onto another network.

I'm planning to replace my German number with "base.de all-in plus + 5GB option + EU-Reiseflat option" at €48/month" in the EPlus network.

As far as I understand this allows usage of the 5GB throughout the EU + CH + FL + N + IS, free incoming calls throughout the EU + free calls within Germany + free calls to Germany from within the EU (+ mentioned countries).

I would discontinue my current Swiss flatrate with sunrise24.ch and, depending on callvolume to Switzerland, buy a Swisscom iO VoiP-flatrate to Switzerland for CHF20/month.

Last remaining problem: I would have to port my current Swiss # to somewhere reasonable to receive calls when not in CH, which I currently do by diverting the #, free of charge because of the flatrate, to toggle. This is what I won´t be able to do in the future in this setup.

How much I would appreciate to be able to port my "usual" Swiss # to toggle is beyond description!

Better yet: Use toggle (or indeed any other SIM) with Swiss + German number (both ported), with an internet flatrate, flat to both countries AND proper callID submission per destination. I wouldn´t hesitate to pay €100/month for that, but it´s just not on offer.

PS - why do I not want to change numbers?

• for starters I haven´t changed my mobile number - ever (>15 years now)
• secondly, my German mobile# is +49-178-abcdefg, German fixed +49-228-abcdefg (Bonn, Germany) and my Swiss # is +41-76-abcdefg ; where abcdefg are identical in all cases :)

You can not keep what you have now for €100/month?

I can, and I´m paying less. However, it involves taking two phone at all times, and sticking SIM cards around each time I cross the border between Switzerland and Germany, i.e. twice daily.

I would love to just seamlessly cross the border, and be online and free to call everyone I want to without thinking before hitting the "dial" button.

So truphone.de would fit for you. See my Review in Teltarif.de

@chrisneedtoknow, I can understand you very much - I am in the exactly same situation!

You write you have a sunrise flat at the moment? Why not port the number over to yallo which have great new flat's and packages on offer (www.yallo.ch). For instance, they offer unlimited flat to CH + EU1 countries including 1 GB of domestic data for CHF 49, which is insanely low for Switzerland. They also have EU roaming packages, but they can't compete with international offers...

Second possibility could be Orange. I've ported my number from sunrise to Orange this January. They had a offer for CHF 20 per month including 1 GB of data and 60 Minutes within Switzerland. I've added the unlimited calls to 3 numbers for CHF 10 per month. One calls home on my Swiss VoIP, one is my LocalPhone Swiss DID to forward whereever I need it and the third number is my MobileVOIP call through number to use my freecall account for worldwide telephony.

Hope this helps!

BK

PS: I live close to Rheineck / St. Margrethen, why not go for a coffee when you are around that place?

Something I haven't thought about as a alternative may be mobilkom.li! They offer great roaming packages on top of their monthly subscriptions. Have a look here: http://fl1.li/de/tarife/telefonieren...1-talk-roaming

You will get a Liechtenstein Number, but as I am aware of it is also possible (since mobilkom.li is a spin off of Mobilkom Austria) to get a Austria 0664 Number (additional).

Mobilkom is a partner of Vodafone, so you will always roam on Vodafone networks where available...

BK