Hi, we haven’t been abroad on a family holiday since pre-brexit. We’ve also now got two teenagers who are glued to their phones. While I’m sure we’ll discourage them a bit, they’ll still use their phones. With all the new charges for roaming, is there a good way to roam while away - or do people go for PAYG sims from the local country?
We’re going to Madeira in this case, but would be interested to hear if there’s any general advice.
If in Europe, if you don’t have included roaming, most MNOs offer roaming add-ons. Outside of Europe, better value is to pick up a local SIM on arrival, and buy a bunch of data. What I do when travelling outside of Europe with family, is that I take a mobile hotspot and put a local SIM into that, and then allow the rest of the family to connect to that. The advantage of this is that you control the connection - everybody else has their phones set to no roaming (and therefore no risk of uncontrolled cost), and you can topup as required. I have a NetGear AirCard - has a swappable battery so you can keep one spare fully charged.
This seems like a very sensible solution, can’t be dealing with four roaming arrangements!
In an odd twist of fate, a lot of the cheaper operators (e.g. iD mobile, Lycamobile, Giffgaff) still have free roaming in the EU+.
That describes the overall picture, the main infrastructure owning network operators are more expensive than the piggybackers.
I could do a giffgaff sim - thanks!
I’m probably far too late, but giffgaff have a 5Gb limit on EU roaming.
Hope you enjoy Madeira!
There’s a breakdown of roaming charges by network on the MoneySavingExpert site - you might not actually need to do much.
Thanks - I’m with 3 so I think I need to sort something out - but might just get a temporary GiffGaff SIM as they seem to be roaming friendly
I’m not sure if you are taking about roaming in Europe or beyond. In Europe, its likely that your provider will not charge you extra, but still worth checking. To do this best to google the name of your provider + roaming and the name of the country you are visiting
Further abroad its very hit and miss. I recently travelled to a country where my provider charges £30/MB! In that instance, I instead used an app called “Airalo” and they provide virtual sims. Follow the instruction in the app, and make sure to only download the Sim over wifi if you are already abroad otherwise you’ll be charged the roaming fee (as I learned the hard way). It worked flawlessly for me.
Great recommendation thank you - I will have a look
Which phone do you have? If your phone supports eSIM, it’s a lot easier to get a local SIM card - especially in places like India where you might get scammed if you’re not careful.
iPhone 12 Pro Max (I think, it’s the big iPhone 12) - I don’t think it support esim unfortunately
ooh wait a quick google tells me it does support e-sim - I’ll have a proper look at this thanks!
