Post Office Mobile - a light at the end of the tunnel for roamers?

[cyrillicguy]

Hi

We've got a new MVNO here in the UK - a Post Office Mobile one. Typical pricing, piggybacking on EE and a promise of 4G by autumn, all pretty much standard except their data roaming charges.

Now according to their price table the data roaming charges are:

- £7 for 200MB for 7 days in Zone 1 (mostly EU countries, but couple of non-EU destinations like Moldova included)

- £20 for 200MB for 7 days in USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand (ok, we've got US, Oz and NZ covered by 3's Feel at Home), but it's a nice one for Canada though

-£30 for 200MB for 7 days in the Rest of the World Zone

Whilst pretty much every network has a decent offer for the EU roaming these days and Three covers USA, Australia and New Zealand with their Feel at Home, when it comes to other countries "your mileage can vary", and £30/200MB looks pretty competetive if you ask me. I wonder whether their roaming coverage is exactly the same as the one for EE customers though? Couldn't find any sort of list of the countries covered on their website.

[cyrillicguy]

here's the link, forgot about that:

https://mobile.postoffice.co.uk/call-rates/roaming/

[jonsie]

I still think that's a tad expensive to be honest. It's time all the main networks upped the game with regards to roaming,  outside of Europe the charges are plain crazy! 

[cyrillicguy]

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@jonsie wrote:

I still think that's a tad expensive to be honest. It's time all the main networks upped the game with regards to roaming,  outside of Europe the charges are plain crazy! 

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I agree, it's not totally "cheap as chips", but a way cheaper than what the networks try to charge us for the privilege. Again, it all depends on how hard/easy is it go get a local sim in the country of your destination, how long are you travelling there for and how often do you go to that particular country. As an example: If I was to go to Canada for 7 days and was not sure when my next visit to Canada was going to take place if at all, I'd probably rather pay £20/200MB to a UK provider knowing that I'm able to send a WhatsApp/Viber/Telegram text as soon as I land there without any hassle of buying a local sim. 200MB is not a lot, but enough to keep in touch on the go (basic texting & emails).

As for networks upping their game in terms of roaming - I could not agree more on that one!

[jonsie]

I come to Thailand 3 times a year for 3 months or more at a time. O2 charge £6.00/mb so for years I relied on wifi. I was ok for texts, the tariff I had was 4 texts out of my allowance to send back to the UK.  I've changed tariff now so although I have my English sim in a spare phone, it's purely to receive messages. I rely on TuGo to use my allowances but of course it's wifi dependent.

I have for the last 2 years used a local sim card. 3GB of data for £6/month with free daytime calls to my wife and something like 1p a minute after 7pm. Obviously when I move here then o2 will be history and apps like WhatsApp and Messenger and Skype will be the way to go for keeping in touch with family. To be honest they are what I use now mainly to contact them. Roaming charges are in a bygone world for me.

[MI5]

No need for anyone to pay roaming charges these days if you are prepared to do as jonsie does, but they rely on people being lazy and using their home sim card out of convenience.

[jonsie]

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@MI5 wrote:
No need for anyone to pay roaming charges these days if you are prepared to do as jonsie does, but they rely on people being lazy and using their home sim card out of convenience.

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So true and unfortunately many people don't research enough when travelling and are hit in the pocket. 

[cyrillicguy]

I've done a few trips to Ukraine within the last couple of years. Buying a local sim there is as simple as it is cheap. They're sold on every corner with no ID or anything like that required. I had a tariff with unlimited data (EDGE/GPRS only as they only starting to build their 3G networks) and unlimited same-network calls for roughly 50p (you've heard me right, 50p) / month.

But...

Going to USA with Three sim with a pre-loaded bundle would be actually cheaper than buying a local USA sim.

Or, if I was to go onto the round-the-world one with several countries involved, something like £30/200MB would start making sense. I'm not saying it's dead cheap, I'm saying it perhaps strikes a more or less the right balance between costs and convenience.

Also, buying a sim can be a rather complex procedure in some countries, plus there are certain places in this world (not to offend anyone) where the less often I have to give my passport details to some stranger the better.

[Cleoriff]

Re your last comment about the difficulty buying a sim abroad......It is an absolute nightmare in Spain. All forms of ID are required along with passports. if you are a Spanish citizen then no problem...A visitor?  Mmmmmm

I had an Orange ES mobile broadband sim (before I got WiFi in my apartment) Even topping that up required a passport ID ...and the shop could not activate it...they had to ring head office in Madrid.....

I was so pleased I got Wifi....20e a month and I can use as many devices as I like....