Availability of "Unlimited" roaming

[davegr]

Hi all,

I've been looking around to see which European mobile operators offer unlimited roaming packages for an additional fee, inclusive in their contracts, or even on a prepaid basis. Perhaps others can add their experience and findings to this thread?

So far I've found:

UK - Vodafone - £3 per day for calls, texts and data as per your usual monthly allowance, postpaid only
UK - EE (incl. Orange & T-Mobile) - £2 per day for unlimited calls & texts but no data, postpaid only
UK - 3 - calls, texts and data from your allowance when roaming in some countries but calls & texts are to the UK only and data is limited to 25GB for unlimited users, postpaid & prepaid

CH - Orange - calls & texts only, postpaid only

SE - Comviq/Tele2 - calls & texts plus 1GB of data, postpaid only

I am yet to find a post-paid offer which you can take up without being a resident of the country in which it is offered. Likewise, I cannot find any PAYG offerings (except for 3UK's limited offer). I assume because it would be too costly for them.*

* I assume that the reason such offers can be made for roaming postpaid users is due to regulated wholesale charges which limit potential cost to the users home network to €0,05. If the user makes a call to an expensive number range, the home network will not pay more than €0,05 as per the regulations. However in the typical prepaid scenario where calls are usually routed via the home network (to have full control of the call based on available credit), they will have to pay the full termination fee applicable for the dialled number as the second leg of the call is originating from their own network.

Has anybody found anything else to add?

Dave

[peterdoo]

You will probably find the best answers on the following page which lists the best roaming options:
http://prepaid-data-sim-card.wikia.c...European_Union

There are other operators that offer almost unlimited EU roaming (Orange Spain, Si.mobil Slovenia,...), however on postpaid plans accessible to residents only.

[rfranzq]

Originally Posted by davegr

I assume because it would be too costly for them.*

You fail to even mention 'unlimited' data as even a possibility.
I suspect the real answer is that it would be too costly to the user.

[davegr]

Originally Posted by rfranzq

You fail to even mention 'unlimited' data as even a possibility.
I suspect the real answer is that it would be too costly to the user.

I'm not entirely sure what point you are trying to make. With the occasional rare exception (e.g 3UK) no network that I know of offers unlimited data without some kind of fair use/acceptable use policy, regardless of cost. With that in mind, there wouldn't be any chance of unlimited roaming data in my opinion.

The closest I've seen is 3 UK's offer where their customers get to use their data allowance abroad in limited countries but those who have unlimited data are limited to 25GB of usage.

Dave

[davegr]

Originally Posted by peterdoo

You will probably find the best answers on the following page which lists the best roaming options:
http://prepaid-data-sim-card.wikia.c...European_Union

There are other operators that offer almost unlimited EU roaming (Orange Spain, Si.mobil Slovenia,...), however on postpaid plans accessible to residents only.

Ah yes, I'd seen this site before but had forgotten about it. Probably because it's quite data-centric.

[lover08]

There are currecly 3 options for cheap data roaming in EU

(1) THREE UK - valid in limited countries £15 gives up to 25 GB in 20 countries and 1000 GB in UK

(2) Orange Spain with deal Go Europe - all EU countries 1€ - 100 MB so 10€ 1GB 20€ 2GB etc. it activates automatically so you don't need to worry each 100 MB will charge you 1€ in all EU countries up to 4G speed available in many countries

(3) Ortel mobile Germany - they have deal 20€ 750 MB + 300 minutes cross Europe additional 500 MB can be activated for 9€

[wolfbln]

There seems to be a misunderstanding of the word "unlimited".

The industry uses it as a buzzword, but it is mostly a fake. Only very few countries actually still have real unlimited data rates on prepaid SIMs.

Given the fact, that data on roaming is given out for a price on average 20 times as much as domestic, real unlimited data rates for roaming do not exist in the EU. They are simply too expensive. Even Three UK's roaming offers are NOT unlimited.

To tell you the truth: I don't exactly know what you mean with unlimited:
- all "default rates", even the EU cap at 23 ct per MB are theoretically unlimited, as some poor fools had to notice facing horrendous bills.
- of course, the are "unlimited" rates governed by a Fair Use Policy. So you will be throttled having reached a certain high speed quota. Theoretically, data on these "unlimited" are really "endless", but throttled. I don't want to call this neither "flatrate" nor "unlimited".

Real unlimited unlimited rates for data on EU roaming with eat as much as you can in high speed do simply not exist, as they would cost a fortune.
-------------------------------------------------

Correction to Lover08: Thanks for loving my suggestions But Orange Spain is not on 4G/LTE, not in Spain, nor anywhere else on prepaid.

[svenn]

You can have unlimited data of course

https://www.mtxc.eu/en/

[bourbonkiller]

Originally Posted by svenn

You can have unlimited data of course

https://www.mtxc.eu/en/

I am not as enthusiastic as he is on this SIM. First because it doesn't cover "anywhere" as the website says, there are quite a lot of countries missing coverage worldwide. Second, you will NOT get unlimited data for € 9.90 PLUS your local VAT PER DAY. This is 300 Euro in a month with 30 days, by the way.

Please be aware, this is a data only card! "SIM Card only allows for data usage as defined by the GSM (Global System for Mobile). All other services, including voice calls, SMS, MMS and USSD cannot be made with SIM Card."

I had a chat with the onsite Service who told me the following:

"We do not limit the volume of this bundle, but you have to pay your attention to the fact that speed depends on many different factors."

"What is more, have a look at this information from our web site https://www.mtxc.eu/en/description-of-services.html
The Company reserves the right to cancel or deactivate Service or reduce data throughput speeds in order to protect the network from harm due to any cause including, without limitation, the excessive and/or unauthorized use of the Company’s service."

Upon request, from which volume onwards it will get limited/throttled I got this answer:

"Unfortunately, this volume highly depends on country/operator/time of day/connection mode"

"it is real to get 10gb per day with some speed limitations"

Upon questioning, what "some speed limitations" means, I got only this:

"Services provide on unlimited plans may not be used for monitoring services, data transmission, transmission of broadcasts, transmission of recorded material, interconnection to other networks, telemarketing activity, autodialed calls, or robocalls. The Company reserves the right to cancel or deactivate Service or reduce data throughput speeds in order to protect the network from harm due to any cause including, without limitation, the excessive and/or unauthorized use of the Company’s service. The Company reserves the right to limit throughput or amount of data transferred and to deny or terminate Service to anyone The Company believes is using their Service in an unauthorized manner or whose usage, in The Company’s sole discretion, adversely impacts a network or customer service levels. The Company will presume the Customer us engaging in an unauthorized use in violation of the Agreement, if in The Company sole discretion, the Customer data usage is harmful or disruptive to a network or service levels. If The Company determines, in its sole discretion, that the Customer is using the Service in violation of the The Company Terms and Conditions or in any other manner that The Company deems to be unreasonable or excessive, The Company may terminate individual data connections, terminate or reduce data throughput or terminate the Service, decline to renew the Service, or offer the Customer a different Service plan with no unlimited usage component."

[bourbonkiller]

So, dear friend @svenn, please stop spamming us with this fake unlimited thing, IT IS NOT REAL! As common, there is no free lunch....