In the penultimate of our global mobile roaming costs blogs, we look at our home continent and how it’s set up for you to use your mobile phone. We’ve explored some of the deepest, darkest reaches of the globe to find out what hidden costs there are with your your phone when you’re out of the country, now let’s see what the deal is like in Germany and Portugal and Italy and all those other nearby countries that always beat us at football.
Alright!
Let’s start with some good news, shall we? Most mobile networks have agreed price caps, meaning you’ll only ever pay a certain amount for using your handset in Europe. While receiving a call in Uruguay or Papua New Guinea could end up costing your up to £3 per minute, in Europe you’ll never pay more than 10p a minute for an incoming call. Which is good.
Gt down wid tha kidz LOL
So Europe’s pretty fair with its pricing structure for roaming. That doesn’t mean that it’s free, though. It’s a fairly good idea to get into the habit of condensing your text replies as much as possible. If your two page SMS is now a one page effort, you’ll save half the price! Plus it’ll come naturally the next time you’re abroad in a non EU country (where prices are higher). Be concise, abbreviate (why is that such a long word, eh?!) where possible and maybe even use text slang. Unless your texting your boss. Probably best to use real words for your boss.
Don’t be complacent
A ten minute phone call back home from your mobile in Europe will cost you, on average, about £5. Forget yourself and those calls can turn into an hour (it’s easily down with a few glasses of sangria). So be vigilant.
Contact your provider before you leave
Most networks have special European traveller schemes, so find out what your network is offering and get it sorted. Most will offer heavily discounted call, text and date packages.
U R EU?
Don’t just assume that you can get deals from your network across the whole continent. A lot of these Euro deals, and obviously all EU laws, only apply to EU countries. So if you’re in Turkey, Croatia, the Canary Islands, Iceland, Russia, Moldova, Belarus, Norway, Montenegro, Andorra, Macedonia or any of the other non-EU countries, you won’t be covered.
Are you a frequent traveller? Get about Europe with your own mobile phone? If you’ve got any killer tips of your own, please share them…
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