Is it worth buying a sim in the EU to get round the fair use roaming issue?

[Bcollinson]

Is it worth buying a sim in the EU to get round the fair use roaming issue?

 

[Odd job]

That's my intention

 

[Brains]

Is it worth buying a sim in the EU to get round the fair use roaming issue?

It may well be.
When you find out how and where you can do it, tell us.

It would be good to find a company close to the EU ports where we can get to from the UK.
(Rotterdam, Calais, Le Havre, Dieppe, Cherbourg, St Marlo, Roscoff, Santander, Bilbao, Dublin)

Don't bother with Germany, you need a German ID and German address to buy a SIM card in Germany.
Many countries limit SIM cards to non residents to stop 'burner' phones being used for drug dealing.

 

[Bustup15]

Why not just buy an esim for the country you intend to visit?

 

[Googlebot]

Why not just buy an esim for the country you intend to visit?

You don’t get much data.

I use Lebara when I need to in France. Just put my passport number and campsite address in the registration and off you go.

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[bobnick]

Don't understand this lark but i've just spent over a £100 in a week to use my pay as you go Giff Gaff in Switzerland.
I believe uploading photos takes a lot of digga dots.
Will get HRH to look into a sim if we come again.

 

[Solwaybuggier]

Yes - but be aware that if you’re using the data to watch UK tv you’ll also need to use a VPN.

 

[Bustup15]

You can get anything you want? For example 30 days unlimited data in France for £56

You don’t get much data.

I use Lebara when I need to in France. Just put my passport number and campsite address in the registration and off you go.

 

[HugoBNB]

Don't understand this lark but i've just spent over a £100 in a week to use my pay as you go Giff Gaff in Switzerland.
I believe uploading photos takes a lot of digga dots.
Will get HRH to look into a sim if we come again.

I use EE UK unlimited data (£32 pcm). It has pretty comprehensive UK cover. If you add the EU roaming I get my full (I have checked this with them and have a record of the chat) data allowance in the EU, USA, Australia, plus a couple of others. It is £2.47 a day, If you are going to be there for more than 10 days, you can add a monthly Roam Abroad pass for £25. It worked a treat on our last trip to France and Spain with good service throughout. All done via the EE app. Just remember to cancel the £25 option before the next month starts.
Safe and happy travels.

 

[PaulW2]

It is quite frustrating how initial (pre-B) assurances about the ability to continue roaming turned to dust.

I find Popit quite satisfactory. I did need to use some UK data before I could ‘park’ it on £1 per month but that wasn’t too difficult.

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[Two on Tour]

Why not just buy an esim for the country you intend to visit?

Only the newer phones will take an E-sim, ours are not that old and are not E-sim compatible.

 

[gus-lopez]

Digi in Spain
Unlimited dat & calls =20€ also all calls are free when used in the Uk & calling uk land & mobile numbers but data in Uk is restricted to 23Gb.

 

[Lenny HB]

I believe uploading photos takes a lot of digga dots.

Easy to resize them using a photo resizing app.

 

[DDJC]

It is quite frustrating how initial (pre-B) assurances about the ability to continue roaming turned to dust.

I find Popit quite satisfactory. I did need to use some UK data before I could ‘park’ it on £1 per month but that wasn’t too difficult.

I am caught in the Popit trap. £13 a month and I can't cancel the bloody thing until I have used a ridiculous amount of data in UK, because I used about 5GB in Europe back in May.

I will definitely be getting an unlimited data, French SIM on day one, on my next trip.

 

[DDJC]

You can get anything you want? For example 30 days unlimited data in France for £56

Who is that with? And where do you get it?
We are looking at one to go into a MIFI router.

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[grasscutter]

I am caught in the Popit trap. £13 a month and I can't cancel the bloody thing until I have used a ridiculous amount of data in UK, because I used about 5GB in Europe back in May.

I will definitely be getting an unlimited data, French SIM on day one, on my next trip.

The easiest thing is to download some tv programmes. It quickly uses the data and makes you roaming compliant.

 

[matbic]

It seems, from my reading of their web site, they have a fair use policy so you only get 50Gbyte per month when in EU for the £25 add-on “Roam Abroad Pass”. So that’s quite expensive as you have to get in to a 24 month contract with them which costs about £20/month. Or have I misunderstood something?

 

[swemmy666]

3x 60GB monthly contract with ID mobile should give you 90GB (30GB per sim), I've not done this, but its a month by month contract so you can terminate if there fair usage policy kicks in...

 

[PaulW2]

I am caught in the Popit trap. £13 a month and I can't cancel the bloody thing until I have used a ridiculous amount of data in UK, because I used about 5GB in Europe back in May.

I will definitely be getting an unlimited data, French SIM on day one, on my next trip.

I found it fairly easy in that I could park the van next to the house, connect to the van Wi-Fi, and simply use that. It didn’t take all that long. There’s a Popit dial on an app where you can see how far you still have to go.

I was initially a bit grumpy because I didn’t know this was a ‘rule’ they had introduced. (Wouldn't it be nice to have regulators that actually look after our interests?)

Not ideal but acceptable.

 

[Itsmcb]

I am caught in the Popit trap. £13 a month and I can't cancel the bloody thing until I have used a ridiculous amount of data in UK, because I used about 5GB in Europe back in May.

I will definitely be getting an unlimited data, French SIM on day one, on my next trip.

How much data do you need to use? Just leave your phone silently playing videos overnight?

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[Sleeveless]

I bought a tourist Vodafone sim in Spain which was then capped in Portugal to 5 Gb, there are so many bear traps in this business ....

 

[jezport]

My EE contract for £13.50PM includes euro roaming up to 50Gig

 

[HugoBNB]

It is quite frustrating how initial (pre-B) assurances about the ability to continue roaming turned to dust.

I find Popit quite satisfactory. I did need to use some UK data before I could ‘park’ it on £1 per month but that wasn’t too difficult.

I may be mistaken, but, according to my French neighbour, there are now fair usage limits between some EU member countries.

 

[PaulW2]

I may be mistaken, but, according to my French neighbour, there are now fair usage limits between some EU member countries.

As I understand it they (the companies) have to apply for a ‘derogation’ from the general assumption of roaming freedom. And in order to succeed they need to demonstrate that they couldn’t allow unlimited roaming without this resulting in an increase in domestic pricing.

So customer protection, with clear rights, and companies have to apply for an exemption and have to be able to demonstrate necessity.

 

[Richard n Ann]

We British do OK . We've had visitors from Poland twice and I have to give them the house Wifi password, apparently data for them in the UK is very expensive, they didn't say how much but none of them paid it.
They only wanted to use WhatsApp /messenger and browser so hardly needed any

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[PaulW2]

We British do OK . We've had visitors from Poland twice and I have to give them the house Wifi password, apparently data for them in the UK is very expensive, they didn't say how much but none of them paid it.
They only wanted to use WhatsApp /messenger and browser so hardly needed any

As ever there are different anecdotes available.

My internet in poor little Portugal is much faster than in the UK (officially 1,000 mbps but I always have half that available). In the UK it’s perfectly adequate but not that good. But mobile data is expensive in Portugal.

And in Northern Europe internet and data provision is often excellent.

But the key thing to my mind is whose interests are placed front and centre in regulation - mine or Vodafone’s?

 

[swemmy666]

We British do OK . We've had visitors from Poland twice and I have to give them the house Wifi password, apparently data for them in the UK is very expensive, they didn't say how much but none of them paid it.
They only wanted to use WhatsApp /messenger and browser so hardly needed any

isn't it comforting to know that UK telco's are not prejudice, they'll rip off anyone of any colour, race, sexuality, or age

 

[Al n Val]

Digi in Spain
Unlimited dat & calls =20€ also all calls are free when used in the Uk & calling uk land & mobile numbers but data in Uk is restricted to 23Gb.

I agree

we were down in Almerimar earlier this year and needed a bit of data, 13€ got me a Digi 200gb sim for a month and really good speeds as well

 

[VXman]

You don’t get much data.

I use Lebara when I need to in France. Just put my passport number and campsite address in the registration and off you go.

Depends where you are. I seem to remember Bosnia or Montenegro (somewhere like that ) was 300gb for 5 euros/2 weeks.

 

[SVMC15]

There are plenty of esim options, they are easy to use and you don't have to change SIM cards. Some are app based like Airalo, worked very well in Morocco. Just used Maya for Egypt also okay, they also do an unlimited data SIM, £40 for France.