EU cuts overseas mobile costs: how to slash them further

Former_MSE_Guy

This thread is to discuss the following news story:

EU caps overseas mobile costs: how to slash them further

emeraldbugle

How can these companies still charge more?

T Mobile is 43p to make and 19p to receive
O2 is 35p to make and 18p to receive
Orange 37.2p to make and 18.6p to receive

Or is it because they offer 'roaming packages' it is okay?

chistery

• [FONT=&quot]Until the phone receives your UK network's signal again, you're 'abroad'. So return home with a switched-off mobile, and if someone leaves a voicemail, it's irrelevant that you’re back; you're still charged the overseas rate.[/FONT]

That's not strictly true. If your phone is abroad and you switch it off, you do not pay to receive voicemail. The call will not leave the UK. If you turn your phone on and set it to divert to voicemail, it won't cost you anything as it's done at a network level and the call never leaves the UK.

If your phone is on and you're abroad, and it rings, then diverts to voicemail, you pay for it.

So if I'm abroad, I set the divert in the menu to my voicemail and leave it on, so I can receive texts. I then send texts via the o2 web site if I'm near a pc.

rash.m2k

It's all about foreign agents and home agents. When you are at home you have a care of address (CAO) in your home network (i.e. UK), once your phone is active outside the UK you are given a new COA and so calls and texts are diverted to that, via the foreign agent.

So until you re-register on your home address and are given back your COA, you will still be classed as roaming.

chistery

rash.m2k wrote: »

It's all about foreign agents and home agents. When you are at home you have a care of address (CAO) in your home network (i.e. UK), once your phone is active outside the UK you are given a new COA and so calls and texts are diverted to that, via the foreign agent.

So until you re-register on your home address and are given back your COA, you will still be classed as roaming.

Sorry, if your phone is turned off, it tells the HLR it's off and calls don't leave the UK. If you set up a network divert (unconditional divert) to voicemail then you won't be charged either to receive messages. The HLR recognises the status of the diverts and will not attempt to divert the call out to your roaming SIM.If you have conditional diverts then yes, you will be charged. An Unconditional divert is diverting all calls, not based on certain conditions, such as after x number of rings.