Posted 1 day ago
Mobile Providers Who Offer EU Roaming, Those Who Charge & How You Can Keep Your Costs Low When Abroad
Thought I'd do a little write up on cheap mobile and data roaming as we are coming up to holiday season
What Does Roaming Mean?
Roaming, in the world of mobile communication, is akin to your phone embarking on a global adventure. When you step foot in another country, your trusty device seeks out a local mobile network to connect with.
In the UK, our mobile network providers have orchestrated intricate agreements with their counterparts in foreign lands. These arrangements ensure that your connection doesn’t vanish into thin air when you venture abroad. No more lost signals or cryptic “no service” messages!
Now, let’s rewind a bit. Back in the good old days (pre-Brexit), gallivanting across Europe with your phone was a breeze. You could chat, text, and surf the web using your existing allowances—no extra charges. But alas, times have changed. Post-Brexit, three major providers—EE, Vodafone, and Three—decided to dust off the old “roaming charges” playbook.
Roaming charges in Europe based on Provider (Some of these ain't pretty)
EE:
O2:
Three:
Vodafone:
Asda Mobile:
BT Mobile:
Giffgaff:
iD Mobile:
Lebara:
Plusnet:
Sky:
Smarty:
Superdrug Mobile:
Talkmobile:
Data Allowance: 5GB Or A Euro Holiday Booster is available (15GB of data plus unlimited calls and texts to the UK and other European destinations):
Tesco Mobile:
Virgin Mobile:
Voxi:
1p Mobile
How to avoid Roaming charges?
Credit for the below to
What Does Roaming Mean?
Roaming, in the world of mobile communication, is akin to your phone embarking on a global adventure. When you step foot in another country, your trusty device seeks out a local mobile network to connect with.
In the UK, our mobile network providers have orchestrated intricate agreements with their counterparts in foreign lands. These arrangements ensure that your connection doesn’t vanish into thin air when you venture abroad. No more lost signals or cryptic “no service” messages!
Now, let’s rewind a bit. Back in the good old days (pre-Brexit), gallivanting across Europe with your phone was a breeze. You could chat, text, and surf the web using your existing allowances—no extra charges. But alas, times have changed. Post-Brexit, three major providers—EE, Vodafone, and Three—decided to dust off the old “roaming charges” playbook.
Roaming charges in Europe based on Provider (Some of these ain't pretty)
EE:
- Contracts: £2.29/day (or £25/month).
- Pay-as-you-go: £2.50/day (£10 for 7 days).
- Data Allowance: 50GB.
O2:
- Contracts: 25GB
- Pay-as-you-go: 25GB.
Three:
- Contracts: £2/day.
- Pay-as-you-go: unlimited
- Data Allowance: 12GB.
- Additional Option: Data Passport for £5 (unlimited data in 89 countries, valid until midnight after activation, maximum 24 hours).
Vodafone:
- Contracts: £2.25/day (or £10 for 8 days, £15 for 15 days).
- Pay-as-you-go: From £7 for 8 days.
- Data Allowance: 25GB.
Asda Mobile:
- Data Allowance: (5GB).
BT Mobile:
- Data Allowance: 15GB.
Giffgaff:
- Data Allowance: 5GB.
iD Mobile:
- Data Allowance: 30GB
Lebara:
- Data Allowance: 30GB.
Plusnet:
- Data Allowance: 15GB.
Sky:
- Contracts: £2/day.
- Data Limit: No set limit.
Smarty:
- Data Allowance: 12GB.
Superdrug Mobile:
- Data Allowance: 12GB.
Talkmobile:
Data Allowance: 5GB Or A Euro Holiday Booster is available (15GB of data plus unlimited calls and texts to the UK and other European destinations):
- £2.25/day
- £10 for 8 days
- £15 for 15 days.
Tesco Mobile:
- Data Allowance: No charges until 2025
Virgin Mobile:
- Data Allowance: Depends on your plan.
Voxi:
- Data Allowance: £2.25 a day for 1 day, £4 for 2 days, £10 for 8 days, or £15 for 15 days. (20GB).
1p Mobile
- Data Allowance: Full data allownace
How to avoid Roaming charges?
- First one is simple, switch to a provider who offers free EU Roaming in their plans, so the likes of O2, Asda, GiffGaff, Lebara, Smarty, talkmobile (Though low 5GB with talkmobile), tesco Mobile until next year and 1p Mobile, along with the likes of RWG Mobile who also offer free Roaming plans
- Switch to an eSim, sometimes these will be far cheaper than paying the extortionate amounts some of the UK networks charge, I will list a few eSim sites for your perusal
Credit for the below to
- Third, and probably the best advice I can give, is if you are planning on going abroad in the next 6 months, just take out a lebara £1 SIM HERE, and use that when abroad
Community Updates
86 Comments
sorted bytravel.orange.com/en
You can also get a polish esim from Orange PL (PLN30 for 30gb in Poland and 6GB EU plus calls and sms) which works out to 6GBP - flex.orange.pl/en/…sim - install the app and register through it.
Outside Europe, you can get a Thai esim with AIS: esim2fly.com/pro…nd/
There are likely other options too...
I tend to avoid the online esim aggregators as you don't know if it will be a proper local sim directly with a local operator or a roaming sim with some random foreign operator... A roaming sim won't have a local number (making calls more expensive and locals often wont call you back because it would be an expensive foreign call for them)... The roaming data also gets tunneled back to the origin country which adds latency and could prevent you from accessing some local geo locked services, or cause other services to get your location wrong. It's also hard to find wether a given operator provides proper Internet access with IPv6 or legacy internet access with only IPv4.
My broadband is with Vodafone if it helps.
Just checked €20 for 150 gb with Go Fly sim.
orange.es/tar…fly (edited)
Lebara Roam Like Home scheme is designed for customers who primarily live in the UK and ideal for short trips to other places in the EU or India. To safeguard against abuse, if your roaming usage is greater than usage in the UK over any continuous 120 day period, you will be subject to a surcharge of 0.20p/MB (equivalent to £2/GB) for data, 0.04p/sec (equivalent to 2.4p/min) for outgoing calls, 0.01p/sec (equivalent to 0.6p/min) for incoming calls and 0.8p for sending an SMS.
In my opinion, some discussions need to be pinned to the top of the page - SIM, laptop, phone, etc. and creation of any new discussion should be intercepted with a prompt to check the pinned discussions first. It helps consolidate information and reduces clutter.
maybe do this instead of worrying about the profile page? Discussion boards like flyertalk manage this pretty well. (edited)
^ Probably the worst advice here as their network abroad is shocking and sometimes takes 2-3 business days to load a route on maps. It struggles to connect for a day sometimes when you arrive in a new country. I've been abroad about 6 times with Lebara in the past year and would not trust it as it only worked well in 2 out of the 6 locations.
All contracts include up to 25GB free roaming (depending on your contract data allowance) and above that is £3.50 per GB.
o2.co.uk/eu-roaming (edited)
Pretty sure my current Vodafone includes roaming.
Very helpful guide to all the different carriers though. Nice one!
We were just in Switzerland, and I had to let my mates tether to my mobile as o2 include Switzerland, but the others (namely Smarty) do not.
Meanwhile, when we were in Andorra, I refused to use data as it was *incredibly* expensive on o2 (something like £60 per GB), whereas some of the others were a little pricey but not insane.
So check your contract, particularly if you’re going to non EU countries. (edited)
esim.net/vod…vel
I was looking at this, as i am traveling outside of EU, and my provider doesnt offer any decent rates!
*I did have a theory of forwarding my current UK mobile to the UK mobile on the esim before i go... But not 100% sure that will work... and dont want to risk landing with no way of sort it
You can have both sim's active, physical sim in phone and esim. there is no charge for recieving calls and texts while roaming on your regular number so not sure what your gaining by trying to forward them to your esim. just make sure you use the roaming esim for any outgoing calls, messages, data.
Companies like “BreathEsim”
breathesim.com/1gb…ee/
BetterRoaming