Off to France at the end of the month so I thought I'd check the roaming charges on the networks available to us. What an eye opener!
O2 no extra charges calls andtexts & up to 25Gb of data
ID (the Curry's version of Three) - as above same 25Gb data allowance
EE unless you buy a bolt on then $2.87 per day! Bolt on $25 per month.
In the UK and we've toured quite a bit and found coverage wise O2 have been the best overall. ID have been patchy but more 5G availability. EE has similar coverage to O2 but I've yet to find somewhere that it worked where O2 didn't and generally less 5g areas than O2. Just goes to show those coverage maps on the websites are predictions and not actual coverage.
Devices used Android S7 5G tablet, 5G Android S22 and Apple iphone 13. All SIMs 5g and all devices 5g capable.
Monthly costs tablet unlimited O2 monthly $36, S22 EE unlimited $41 monthly and iPhone 13 ID 35Ghz $21.50. Costs stricly to demonstrate similar bundles were used and I make no recommendations!
------------- Best Regards
David
Don't forget to leave a review of the French and other European campsites you have visited!
We are in the same boat (literally from Tuesday!!).
In the past we have got a 100gb fully loaded SIM from EE that included free roaming but they no longer allow the roaming on it now.
The Mrs was with sky mobile last year but it cost her £2.50 a day for roaming, I was with talkmobile and they allow free roaming (supposedly with a fair usage cap, although I went quite a bit over it last year and didn't get charged extra or noticeably throttled.
The Mrs is now also with talkmobile so we will both use that and I'm going to get an esim for my tablet, downloading a local esim is probably the easiest way to go if your phones allow them, we also looked at glocalme but that was extremely expensive, the problem I've seen with esims is that very few allow tethering
Naturally we're leaving the EE SIM behind. The mrs is on O2 in addition to the O2 in the tablet theres the ID card too so betwen us we've 100Gb of data available to last us a month.
I've already downloaded the latest maps for Western Europe for the Here We Go sat nav so I can use it without using any data while in France.
We might stream a bit of UK radio (via a proxy if necessary!), so the 100Gbs will only be used for collecting email, web browsing and local searches on the ACSI app to choose sites and restaurants.
TBF I'm an O2 business customer so 2 iPhones and the tablet are via that. I needed an android phone to run some radio amateur apps which won't work on apple and ID had a very good deal on at the time for the S22 so hence the ID SIM but in the end I'm pleased I got it and it'll be due an upgrade shortly so that may be the time to retire the mrs iPhone 12!
I do still have a French PAYG sim from our last visit to France - its in the tech cupboard in the caravan.
It might be worth you looking at Manx Telecom for the future they get automatic roaming in EU and are still counted part of the UK so they've a foot in both camps. They seem to have some good deals at the moment too
Hope you have a lovely time we'll be 2 weeks behind you. Its Walesby Forest torchlight next weekend so we're going to that and then its a quick change to get the dogs certificates and then 2 days to get the caravan prepped for France leaving home 4 days before the ferry crossing - we're having 2 stops en route because Portsmouth is a very long way from here!
My UK phone is with Three, on a long contract. When I signed, they advised to get a PAYG SIM card for roaming; looking into it when the time came, the roaming allowance wasn’t great. So I ended up getting a ID SIM, unlimited (UK) with 30Gb roaming allowance, for £20 pm. As I was using it for satnav, WhatsApp, online TV, and tethering for web browsing and blog updates, and being away for five weeks, I wasn’t sure how much I was going to use, but it turned out fine. I was a bit late with reapplying at the end of the month, which got expensive, about £6 for the day I think.
I’ve got another month coming up, so will put the money on it again, and keep my “overseas” number alive. I’m reviewing options on the UK phone; it probably won’t be Three on renewal.
Don't forget to leave a review of the French and other European campsites you have visited!
Morepints - Funny that Three charge for roaming but ID which is the Curry's offering and uses the Three network does not charge for roaming.
FionaF - Tesco mobile uses the O2 network so as O2 don't charge for roaming its good to know that Tesco are simply passing this on to their customers.
Oswestry Ed - your BT is a bit odd as BT use the EE network and EE charge for EU roaming so BT are giving you a benefit that EE's own customers don't get. Smarty uses the Three network so presumably Smarty have a similar arrangement with Three to Curry's giving your mrs free roaming where as poor Morepints who is a Three customer gets charged for his roaming.
There are only actually 4 networks in the UK with Spectrum Licenses and physical radio masts which provide the service and these are O2, EE, Vodaphone and Three. Everyone else piggybacks on one of these and as we can see some offer better benefits than the people who actually use the network directly. GiffGaff uses O2 btw and offer RLAH free of charge.
Best deals are usually on pay monthly with roaming, data bundles and speeds etc but the downside of this is that you incur charges if you leave early so its not as easy to flit between providers when better deals arise. PAYG is kind of cheap and cheerful but very much more flexible.
Up to each what they want. There are other benefits with some networks which may not be obvious at first. With my O2 contract phones I get acess to a whole network of wifi hotspots. With EE you have to also have their broadband service to get access to their wifi hots spots. I've not looked at what ID do as I'm already well covered elsewhere.
Strange old world
------------- Best Regards
David
Don't forget to leave a review of the French and other European campsites you have visited!
My package with EE is unlimited data with roaming in EU and US/Canada, took it out mainly for work.
My MiFi has Smarty with unlimited data which does not cost me extra for roaming in Europe. However, they have a fair usage cap of 12GB for a month. Thank goodness for EE!
DK
------------- Apple The Campervan - A Van For Work, Rest & Play!
- 2027: ? NL+DE+FR
- 2026: FR+DE
- 2025: 17/77
'24: 10/49; '23: 9/47;'22: 8/46; '21: 9/34
* Ex-tenter
* Treat life events like a dog: if you can't eat it, play with it or hump it, p1$$ on it and walk away!
dk168 lucky you! I took my EE package out just over a year ago and for me I'm afraid no free EU data - I'd have to pay £2.87 a day or buy a bolt on for £25.
It is Interesting that it also seems to depend when you took out the package as to whether or not the roaming is free.
We've got a Popit SIM in our MH WiFi, no roaming charges and you can use all of your allowance, they'll also do a temporary top-up if you're running out of allowance and you give them a call beforehand. Popit uses the EE networks and partners abroad, we never had any problems with coverage when we were away in June.
My own personal phone is on O2 but I'm thinking of swapping to Lebara when the contract runs out, they use the Vodaphone network and partners. Again, there's no roaming charges or allowance limit.
Quote: Originally posted by david8858 on 11/8/2024
dk168 lucky you! I took my EE package out just over a year ago and for me I'm afraid no free EU data - I'd have to pay £2.87 a day or buy a bolt on for £25.
It is Interesting that it also seems to depend when you took out the package as to whether or not the roaming is free.
THe vagueries of mobile phone deals
I dragged Muckerette away from Virgin and added her to my existing EE account (inc. free EU Roaming) in the summer of 2022.
I say I was adding her to my existing account, but what actually happened was EE gave us a nice new shiny 2 year contract, without giving any mention whatsoever to EU Roaming.
The next I heard on the subject was... Any contract from June 2022 will not include EU Roaming... blah, blah... £15 bolt on for the month you're away... Each... blah, blah!
That quickly escalated to £25!
That all kicked in about 3 weeks before we got our nice new shiny 2 year contract!
I have this very week (Now that 2 years is up) jumped ship, and got us both on ID Mobile (Three) on much less per month, and including EU Roaming (Max 30GB each, which is way, way over what we need/will likely use).
Time will tell if we've done the right thing, but losing that free EU Roaming without mention/fair warning, and paying an extra £50 per holiday for our two phones just p**sed me off, I had to leave on principle!
My colleague continues to receive free EU Roaming (from EE), as he continues on an older contract.
I blame Muckerette for moaning about her Virgin Mobile service!
I changed to ID mobile at the beginning of the year. Smooth changeover, no problems either in UK or in France for 7 weeks earlier this year. Also they roll over any unused data from the previous month and do not increase prices annually with a sim only contract.
We have 3 phones on EE, 2 on Tesco and 1 on Vodafone in the household.
As others have said, the Tesco package has roaming included at the moment. The Vodafone contract is a company phone with roaming included.
The interesting ones are the EE contracts. On paper they didn't have Roaming included but just before we went to the Pyrenees last Summer, I called EE up to ask what the most cost efficient way to include roaming was; in effect we just wanted two weeks' worth of roaming. The very helpful customer agent at EE had a quick word with their manager (or popped for a cuppa or fag or vape) and then came back to confirm that the all three EE contracts could have roaming added for free.
We are about to travel to France again (this weekend) so I called up EE to find out what the situation is and they confirmed that roaming was still included on the three lines.
So, if you are on EE it may be worth giving them a call and just asking them a naïve question about the cheapest way to add roaming. They might just add it on for free...
Hi thechief - they have a brand new automated answering service which I went through twicebefore losing the will to live! The first time it spat out a text message with a link to all the information about Roaming and how to turn it on at what cost - it then cut the call off.
The second time I steered a different route through it hoping to speak to a human but silly me, to no avail it spat out a different text message with trouble shooting information before dropping the call.
As I already have sufficient free data from 2 other suppliers for my trip - I gave up! Thanks for the tip though.
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Topic: Roaming charges for EU
via mobile 10/8/2024 at 2:31pm
