No EU roaming fees - no roaming (anymore)
 

Hello,

the no-roaming-fee-decision got some bad sideeffects.

Exemple Sweden:

- Tele 2 / Comviq: Prepaid roaming is only possible with an "EU roaming add on" - you have to pay for it, can`t use your credit
- 3 : No prepaid roaming anymore (not even in other 3 countries)
- Telia: Roaming only after registering your prepaid card - will be interesting, if this is possible w/o a swedish id

Other networks like Telenor Dk or Telia Fi do not offer prepaid roaming at all. Is this the goal of the EU regulations??

The goal is to offer free EU roaming to inhabitants of Sweden just like Telia does it. An address in Sweden or work contract or university inscription should normally be accepted.

EU is not trying to achieve that people should be able to use free roaming of any country where they do not reside.

EU roaming add-on is not allowed by the EU regulation. Only separate tariffs (with and without roaming) without the possibility to switch easy between them are allowed.

Tariffs without roaming are bad side effect. The customers will decide whether they will be successfull or not.

No EU roaming fees===== no roaming (anymore)
 

So suddenly, THIS website and International Roaming SIMs become super relevant again.

Why did we not see this coming?

Lyca Mobile (UK) are stating that you don't get to use bundles while roaming and also that incoming calls are subject to a 200 minute per month FUP.

Details here: http://www.lycamobile.co.uk/en/eu-ro...bf38c4d06a516b

I suspect they will only be one of many networks who try to sidestep the rules. The roaming regulations are very simple to understand, so any attempt to sidestep them should be dealt with by way of extremely heavy fines, in my opinion.

Hi. I'm watching the implementation of Roam like at home very closely as I had to amend more than 100 operators in 28+3 countries for the prepaid data wiki.

Now most countries are up to date and for prepaid users it's so far a success story. Only few countries are opting out. They got a derogation from their regulator: the Baltic States, Denmark, partly Finland.

The operators in more expensive countries were afraid to be overrun by the cheap plans from the East or North, but this hasn't materialized so far. Most providers apply a very rigid "FUP" in the cheaper countries.

The best thing: rates have come down considerably. Those providers using a FUP are at around €4.50/GB and even the "misuse rate" is only around €9.30/GB (variable by different local VAT taxes). These are rates we have dreamed of, but they are more or less in line with domestic rates in the more expensive countries in Europe.

It's true: some providers stopped offering roaming, some built in new hurdles, others give out only around 10% of their packages at domestic rates like in Poland (and still call it RLaH). So it's now essential to check every provider for their policy. Lycamobile is the internationally most known to (partly) disobey the new rules in a dozen countries. While they give out roaming at the same default rate like each domestic rate, they don't allow allowances to be used from their domestic bundles and packages.

I try to keep all EU/EEA countries updated in the prepaid Wiki with a focus on roaming. I guess users are still interested as long as this picture is so scattered. For instance, we still don't know much about the FUP against permanent roaming and how stringent it will be applied.

On this site I give a survey about what we have learned so far:
prepaid-data-sim-card.wikia.com/wiki/European_Union
For each operator in the EU/EEA please check every country site. To most operators have been added a paragraph about roaming now.
Yesterday, I dared to give first advice what a roamer in Europe is supposed to do now in the yellow box.

And please add your experience to the comments there. And when you've found the new roaming "queen" SIM card, let me know :-) I have already some national offers in my mind giving out lots of allowances without restrictions to EU roaming for a new recommendation list, but to check them will take some time. Much to my surprise, they don't come from usually "cheap" countries. As I like EU/EEA roaming to be a success, I don't like to give advice how to bypass rules at the moment. When the new regulations have been established and proven to be working, it may be different later. Then we may add a new list of recommended SIM cards for EU roaming again.

Thanks for your efforts.
 

Thank you for your efforts.

two European trips coming up, and was hoping to use my UK Orange PAYG Simcard - but checking the rates, 40p (over 50c) a minute to call within EU! (though free to receive now) So TMo USA plan is cheaper, 20c/min in or outbound.

Other way
 

Just figured out:

SFR: Calling and texting like in France, Data disactivated (!):
"Les connexions internet ne sont pas possibles depuis l`étranger."

That's exactly why I took the effort to check every single European operator. There are some:
- where roaming is blocked
- where surcharges have been granted by the regulator
- where you need a special registration for roaming
- where you are technically downgraded (only 3G for instance)
- where a volume FUP is applied (only part of a package is given out at the domestic rate)
- where a time FUP may be applied (against pernanent roaming. This is still in the balance, as the regulation is only enforced for 2 months now).

That's why I can only advise to check the Data Wiki before when you want to buy a SIM card and use it in another EU country. We are now very up to date when it comes to EU roaming restrictions in all EU/EEA countries.
Of course, we are still waiting for feedback about the time restrictions, but they will kick in after at least 4 months of permanent roaming. So there is no experience about that yet.

For your SFR La Carte in France it states for example: EU roaming
Note that you can only roam for voice and SMS on a SFR La Carte at domestic rates abroad. All international data roaming is now disabled for SFR prepaid customers.

Other restrictions apply to other operators in France too. There is hardly one country where "roam like at home" applies without any restrictions or FUPs to all operators. Nevertheless, it has been adopted by most of them. EU roaming charges plummeted (from €10 per GB to around €3-6/GB) while roaming traffic has surged this summer.

After all, it can be seen as a success, but the situation has not become much clearer as hoped by many as every provider still goes its own way within the regulation and some still outside.

I tried to read

http://prepaid-data-sim-card.wikia.c...European_Union

but I failed. An example: I found 18 times FUP - but what does it means? Fair Use Policy?

I think so. Perhaps the first use should include "Fair Use Policy (FUP)." In English FUP is normally the acronym for "follow up."

As for difficulty in understanding the page, I'd lay the blame on the telcos for making such a complicated implementation of so simple a concept. Ideally the page should be short, e.g. "You can now roam throughout the following countries at your home rates, i.e. without any roaming surcharges."

Sorry, i might have explained the term FUP once in the text. In Wikipedia.com it pops up as first suggestion. So I thought you are familiar with that term. The wording of "fair use policy" is an industry term for sure and I don't like it. What is fair about a throttle? And for me it has a moralistic undertone. But i will add some explanatory words. The Wiki is always hard to phrase as it appeals to people with very different foreknowledge. That's why a kind of manual has been added already.

The article describes the reasons why it's so tricky for the operators:
Quote:
The regulation concerns 28+3 national markets with different rules, licences, fees and costs. The gaps within Europe are still wide. For example, consumers in Latvia spent in 2014 on average €3.70 a month and Irish consumers an average of €23.80 per month for using their mobile phones.

Europeans have different travel habits across the countries, and there are also different network costs in visited countries. Consumer retail offers vary widely between states. In 2016 the cheapest monthly deals offering 1GB of data, 600 minutes of calls and 225 SMS ranged from €60 in Hungary to €8 in Estonia (excl. VAT). For prepaid data 1GB is commonly sold at €10 in Germany, while you can get it for less than the equivalent of €0.40 in Poland.

Now, imagine that you want to impose one general rule, that applies to all countries and all roaming consumption shall be charged according to the domestic rate of the home country which is commonly referred to as "roam like (at) home" or RLH.
This will eventually lead to people in Hungary taking a SIM from Estonia and use it in their own country roaming forever.

Imagine you in Canada with the highest prices in the Americas will go down to Bolivia and take a SIM from there to use it in Canada at Bolivian rates. This will not pay off for Rogers, Telus and Bell, I guess. So the operators wanted to have a lot of safeguards in place.

It's a miracle that it's working adequately at all. And as an American you are probably not so unfamiliar with people who consider "state ordered" unified prices as "socialism" or the end of free maket society. You can find them here too.

The confusion about FUP arises I think because the acronym appears several times before the first use of the phrase itself (in the heading "Abuse and Fair Use Policy.") That makes it difficult for those who aren't familiar with the acronym to figure out what it means until later in the page.

First, let me thank you and your colleagues for all the efforts you have made here and in the Wiki to help us all over the years. You have provided a very useful service that I have benefited from many times over the years.

I appreciate that an EU-wide regulation that affects countries that have their own distinct pricing models is going to be complicated. Otherwise it would lead to the sort of abuse you describe. (A similar situation existed with T-Mobile in the US when they introduced free roaming that included Canada. It was actually less expensive for a Canadian resident to buy a T-Mobile SIM while in the US, then use it primarily in Canada, compared to using a Canadian SIM in Canada only. T-Mobile responded by cutting off those who used their SIM to roam more than occasionally.)

Still, it seems to me that there is a need for occasional roaming when someone is temporarily outside their home country. For instance I'll be landing at MUC next week, then taking the train into Austria for a vacation. I don't have a German SIM because I generally don't stay long there. But it would be useful to roam on my A1 SIM, which I have had for several years, so that for example I can access my OeBB rail ticket to show the conductor while I'm still in Germany. My roaming usage will be a few MB at most out of the 5GB quota I have with A1. Roaming for such purposes should be simple, easy to understand and included in the cost of every SIM plan.

Unfortunately things aren't always that simple. As a result we get complicated solutions that are difficult, if not impossible, to describe. I think you have done a good job with the EU roaming page. Again, thank you.

P.S. I wonder how the various post offices share the costs of sending and delivering international mail. For example I just purchased a USB adapter from a Chinese store on Aliexpress. The total cost, which is less than €1, includes shipping from China to Canada. And yet Canada Post charges more than that amount to send a similar package within Canada. So how does Canada Post recover their cost of delivering the package to me?

MTX connect
 

on a recent trip to Italy was going to use my UK Orange Sim, but unclear if add-ons for domestic use on pre-paid would work in Europe. And costs were very high, 30-40p/min for PAYG depending on plan! So I stuck with TMob USA, and played around with MTX data only sim in my wifi hotspot device, worked very well, 1.6 GB in Europe for 20 Euro. Great for Whatsapp or wifi calling on the road.

Thanks for your compliments and suggestions. I really appreciate them. I'm checking to replace some "FUPs" in the introduction by other (less technical) terms that mean essentially the same like "limitations". FUP can be mentioned and explained when the text is about the "policy" behind these limits further below.

Good news: Your Austrian A1 SIM will work in Germany at domestic Austrian rates (called roam like at home) (as long as its still alive).
It's easy to check: just go to the Austrian article of the Wiki, select your operator and look for the "EU roaming" section and for A1 it looks good.

You are lucky because it's currently a nightmare to get a prepaid SIM card in Germany registered and activated. I really had to greylist (or graylist) my country as many foreigners and locals alike can't register prepaid SIM cards on major brands like Telekom these days. That's how we fight terrorism here :-( I hope this will change again. I've already did some updates about it here and in the Wiki.

Genau. I did the same itinerary a couple of months ago, coming back to MUC on 14Jun, so I missed the free-roam start date by one day.

But nothing is ever as easy as it should be. My SIM is micro size for a Nexus 5 phone. I recently bought a Oneplus 5 phone which uses a nano size SIM. I could cut my SIM down but I don't want to risk destroying it. So I have to bring both phones, then set up the N5 as a WiFi hotspot for the OP5 until I get to Innsbruck. There's an A1 shop about 500m from the train station. Hopefully they can transfer the account and balance to a nano SIM or they can cut the SIM down more accurately than I can.

Yes, security theater at its worst. But at least they relaxed the liability for running public WiFi hotspots so for the past couple of years one can get it at MUC without having a functioning phone to receive an SMS code. Tiny steps forward...

had a very good experience with MTX connect data only sim card on my personal wifi device, 1.6 GB for 20Euro over 30 days, very easy to set up.

Well I'm 0 for 2 with RLAH.

First I purchased Tuenti SIM in Spain, got 4G there but then dropped to 3G as soon as I crossed the border into France. 3G in other European counties and 3G in the US.

Then I purchased an A1 B.free Internet SIM in Austria 2 weeks ago, got good not great 4G speeds in country.

Now I'm right dab in the middle of Munich, just 1 or 2 blocks from the main train station.

It can't stay connected in my hotel room. When it does connect, it gets 5 bars on my iPad Air 2. It connects to Telekom.de 3G or O2.de 3G. Tried rebooting iPad, made sure LTE is enabled and it won't connect to LTE, if it connects at all.

I guess less than 3 months into RLAH, the carriers aren't taking chances and imposing FUP policies. Maybe EU residents will have to complain and then in 3-4 years, the EP might address it or come up with another acronym, one which isn't as misleading as RLAH, since that implies the same experience and performance when possible.

A1 is a Vodafone partner. Normally it prefers Vodafone networks in roaming. Maybe that is why they try to keep you out of Telekom and o2 in Germany. You might try to select Vodafone manually.

Tuenti claims that they do not prevent 4G in roaming. According to them it is the o2 roaming platform that does not allow their customers to use 4G in roaming. People are complaining, however it will take some time until these problems are solved.

I thought Tuenti was a Movistar MVNO.

I contacted A1 by Twitter and they said I should have 4G with all 3 carriers in Germany.

I tried Vodafone as well.

Maybe it's a problem with my device, like there is a special roaming profile I need or something.

Only setting I see is to enable or disable LTE or roaming.

Tuenti is Telefónica owned MVNO. That means that they operate with their own 21432 IMSIs in Spain and buy services from Telefónica and Movistar under more or less the same conditions like other MVNOs on the market do. For roaming they use the Telefónica/o2 roaming platform (21407 IMSIs) which according to them does not enable LTE roaming for Tuenti customers.


According to A1 two Months ago B.free was not yet enabled for LTE roaming. Just 3G and 2G:
https://www.a1community.net/b-free-3...roaming-249089

Maybe this is still the same. I could not find any comment claiming that LTE roaming has been enabled for B.free meanwhile.

OK, maybe the customer support person didn't know what she was talking about then.

Of course the carriers don't disclose what kind of roaming experience you can expect.

I just got to MUC on the S-Bahn. I got 4G on Vodaphone along the way and continue to get ~10Mb/s at MUC. OTOH from Kufstein to Muenchen speeds varied based on location, often excruciatingly slow.

4G is good but 10 Mbps isn't that great.

Like I said, when I was roaming on 3G, I was getting 7-8 Mbps.

10Mbps is fast enough for my needs in general and especially when roaming in a foreign country. For me roaming access is far more important than blazing speeds.