European Roaming Plans

I'm going to Europe this summer. Usually, if I spend most of my time in
one country, I buy a prepaid SIM there and just put up with roaming
charges upwards of 1.00 Euro/min. This time, I'm going to be spending a
few weeks in both The Netherlands and Germany with a few days in
Austria, Belgium and London.

Seeing as how most of my calling will be done in either The Netherlands
or Germany, are there any plans that cover both countries? Or have
reasonable roaming rates in one or the other?

--
Paul Hovnanian mailto:Paul@Hovnanian.com
------------------------------------------------------------------
Leap and the net will appear.

"Paul Hovnanian P.E." <paul@hovnanian.com> writes:

> I'm going to Europe this summer. Usually, if I spend most of my time in
> one country, I buy a prepaid SIM there and just put up with roaming
> charges upwards of 1.00 Euro/min. This time, I'm going to be spending a
> few weeks in both The Netherlands and Germany with a few days in
> Austria, Belgium and London.
>
> Seeing as how most of my calling will be done in either The Netherlands
> or Germany, are there any plans that cover both countries? Or have
> reasonable roaming rates in one or the other?

The only international plan I was offered by Cingular for my recent
trip to Germany/Austria was about $5/month and it dropped the roaming
rate from like $1.49/min to 99c/min. This was without changing to
another sim or anything. It's at least better than 1euro/min I
guess.

I'm curious what others will offer as a solution. There must be a
good way to do this.

--
Todd H.
http://toddh.net/

At 16 May 2007 17:43:55 -0700 Paul Hovnanian P.E. wrote:

> I'm going to be spending a
> few weeks in both The Netherlands and Germany with a few days in
> Austria, Belgium and London.
>
> Seeing as how most of my calling will be done in either The Netherlands
> or Germany, are there any plans that cover both countries? Or have
> reasonable roaming rates in one or the other?

I will defer any suggestions to those with experience traveling to those
countries, but would suggest you check out prepaidgsm.net- it covers
virtually all of the prepaid services in the world, including the
"international SIMs" that work in all countries.

On 2007-05-17, Paul Hovnanian P.E. <paul@hovnanian.com> wrote:
> I'm going to Europe this summer. Usually, if I spend most of my time in
> one country, I buy a prepaid SIM there and just put up with roaming
> charges upwards of 1.00 Euro/min. This time, I'm going to be spending a
> few weeks in both The Netherlands and Germany with a few days in
> Austria, Belgium and London.
>
> Seeing as how most of my calling will be done in either The Netherlands
> or Germany, are there any plans that cover both countries? Or have
> reasonable roaming rates in one or the other?

I have occasionally seen plans in European countries where you can
roam on sister networks in other countries at no additional charge
(H3G in the UK offers this for the (few) other countries where they
operate, including Austria and Italy), but none of the UK operators
with sister networks in the Netherlands or Germany offer this and I have
no idea whether different options are available in those countries.

The decline of the dollar against European currencies has made the
$0.99/minute offered by T-Mobile, or Cingular if you pay them a
monthly fee, look fairly competitive compared to European roaming
rates. If I'm not going to be in a country long enough to justify
a local SIM I generally use the US SIM for roaming.

Dennis Ferguson

Paul Hovnanian P.E. wrote:

<snip>

> Seeing as how most of my calling will be done in either The Netherlands
> or Germany, are there any plans that cover both countries? Or have
> reasonable roaming rates in one or the other?

Take a look at "http://www.hiusa.ekit.com/ekit/MobilePurchase/Services"

Global Premium
--------------
-Per minute rates from 99¢/minute
-No connection fee
-Free incoming in France, Italy, Spain, and UK
-45 minutes of surcharge free incoming calls from the U.S. via an
toll-free U.S. access number (39¢ per minute after that)
-UK Phone number
-$9 (includes $20 in credit)

Passport Plus Service
---------------------
-Per minute rates from 29¢/minute
-Per-call connection fee of 25¢
-No free incoming calls
-Toll free U.S. access number, with a 39¢ per minute charge
-UK phone number
-$49 (includes $10 in credit)

Passport Premium Service
------------------------
-Per minute rates from 49¢/minute
-Per-call connection fee of 25¢
-Free incoming calls in 50 countries
-Toll free U.S. access number, with a 39¢ per minute charge
-UK phone number
-$39 (includes $10 in credit)

It all depends on how much you expect to use the phone as to which plan
is most cost-effective. Personally, I'd try to minimize mobile phone
use, using something like OneSuite to call back to the U.S. when
possible, so I'd go with the Global Premium. YMMV.

This place really gouges you on shipping, and there doesn't appear to be
a way to order multiple cards per order. I'd order a bunch of Global
Premium cards just for the 45 minutes of surcharge free incoming calls,
but they don't let you do that (you'd have a new phone number for each
card).

We went last summer taking our V3 Razr with. I had Cingular give me the
world traveler plan and everything went flawlessly. You will also be amazed
how much better serivce is in Europe than here btw
"Paul Hovnanian P.E." <paul@hovnanian.com> wrote in message
news:464BA54B.264819B3@hovnanian.com...
> I'm going to Europe this summer. Usually, if I spend most of my time in
> one country, I buy a prepaid SIM there and just put up with roaming
> charges upwards of 1.00 Euro/min. This time, I'm going to be spending a
> few weeks in both The Netherlands and Germany with a few days in
> Austria, Belgium and London.
>
> Seeing as how most of my calling will be done in either The Netherlands
> or Germany, are there any plans that cover both countries? Or have
> reasonable roaming rates in one or the other?
>
> --
> Paul Hovnanian mailto:Paul@Hovnanian.com
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
> Leap and the net will appear.

jdoe wrote:
> We went last summer taking our V3 Razr with. I had Cingular give me the
> world traveler plan and everything went flawlessly. You will also be amazed
> how much better serivce is in Europe than here btw

I haven't found the European and Asian coverage all that much better
than Verizon in the U.S., but yes, European and Asian GSM service is
much better than U.S. GSM service.

In rural areas of Asia, you often lose coverage on GSM, and there is no
AMPS to back you up, you just have no service.

Recently, Paul Hovnanian P.E., <paul@hovnanian.com>, wrote:

> I'm going to Europe this summer. Usually, if I spend most of my time in
> one country, I buy a prepaid SIM there and just put up with roaming
> charges upwards of 1.00 Euro/min. This time, I'm going to be spending a
> few weeks in both The Netherlands and Germany with a few days in
> Austria, Belgium and London.
>
> Seeing as how most of my calling will be done in either The Netherlands
> or Germany, are there any plans that cover both countries? Or have
> reasonable roaming rates in one or the other?

Although perhaps a bit too far into the future for your visit, the EU has
finally enacted rulemaking to standardize and lower intra-European roaming,
so this may have some effect on roaming rates should you opt to obtain a
local SIM for Germany and/or The Netherlands. You may want to contact a
given carrier in either of those countries to see if any rate reduction will
be implemented and if so on which plans which may make roaming to Austria,
Belgium, and the UK more affordable.

This brings up a question: As most if not all European SIMs (and non-GSM
mobile service if there is any left!) are "Caller Pays" (and hence free to
the mobile subscriber), what happens, for example, if you obtain a SIM in
Germany, and travel west to France and you receive a call? The caller still
pays the premium/mobile rate, but does the mobile subscriber also pay in
such cases for incoming roaming calls?

Basically, do European carriers agree that to increase the use of mobile
phones and their actual use while roaming they will not bill each other for
servicing incoming calls to European roamers (or pool such calls), or do
they see roaming as solely an immediate "revenue proposition" and soak the
roamer for as much as they can (much like the US 5 to 10 years ago [and it's
still done in some cases, although the actual subscriber may not notice if
the carrier eats it]).

-Doug

abcdoug-wn@interpage.net (remove the first three letters of the alphabet to
mail
me)

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