[adam917]

Originally Posted by bbob

It's not the end for free roaming sims. It's more of a problem for sims like yackie. If you look at their incoming rates for europe they have to be on the same maximum than any other EU telecom company. thus a German user might as well use his german sim when traveling in europe.

On the other hand there is still a big market for international travellers that go outside the euo or are visiting the eu. No regular operator is offering free roaming in the USA, this makes the roaming sim still viable in this market.

The US (and Canadian) market is different in that we don't have Calling/Sending Party Pays, hence no way to have 'free incoming' like is possible elsewhere. We don't even have free incoming SMS! What's funny is that back in the late 1990s, there were talks about trying to switch the US mobile market to a CPP model but I guess it never happened.

I still think one of the best deals for travelling in Europe is one of the UK SIMs, maybe Vodafone, which has the Passport feature that gives great rates on not only travelling in the 27 EU member states but several other countries as well (usually places Vodafone has a presence). Even data with them isn't a real killer (they have a daily rate of one price up to 25 MB instead of a pure pay-per-use rate like others have) provided you use it wisely like sticking to mobile sites, no satellite view in Google Maps, completely exit apps when not using them, etc, even though it of course could be better.

I think data is what will kill off int'l SIMs though because most people don't want to be carrying & using 2 phones at once unless one is in a bag or something saved as a backup in case the primary one breaks or is lost. Data is the big demand now, not voice & text alone any-more. Data on those SIMs is simply too expensive compared to local SIMs and even in some cases (like what I mentioned above w/ Vodafone UK) roaming SIMs, plus the increment is often too high (I am not dumb enough to use an already expensive service & also charges in chunks of 100 KB).