MSE News: Are mobile giants' new roaming bundles any good?

AddieB

Roger1 wrote: »

I usually take my laptop and connect with 3G using a dongle. (I have specific dongles/SIMs for Switzerland and South Africa and hope for free internet elsewhere.)

These 'new' packages are for smartphones. Does anybody know of such packages for dongles using 3G?

Thanks.

Vodafone do £8 for 100MB.
http://www.vodafone.co.uk/personal/price-plans/pay-monthly/mobile-broadband-abroad/index.htm

David_BB

I am with AddieB. I signed up to a sim only 12 month contract with Vodafone mainly to get access to their £10/month 25MB/day "data traveller" package. Now I am stuck with the rest of my 12 month contract and a potential charge of £90/month if I use my smartphone for data each day while on motorhoming trips abroad.
As Vodafone have changed the terms of my contract can I cancel without penalty? No doubt somewhere in their small print they are allowed to change terms while I have to stay committed to the 12 month contract.

Kingsd316

when is orange going to update their roaming page with tariffs from 1st July 2012!

NFH

All these data roaming charges remain a total rip-off. For example, I recently went to Belarus and got a local SIM card from MTS to put in my iPhone. With this SIM card, 1GB of data costs BYR 30,500, equating to £2.38. If I had used 1GB of data on my Orange UK SIM card, it would have cost me £5,500 on a business tariff or £8,000 on a consumer tariff. The bandwidth was also much better than in the UK - 6Mbps downstream and 3.3Mbps upstream.

There is no justification for data roaming to cost any more than what locals are charged in the visited country. The EU needs to go further and also apply regulations to roaming with EU-based SIM cards outside the EEA, particularly with regard to retail margins. It used to be standard practice until early 2001 for home networks to add a 35% markup to the wholesale cost charged by the visited network; these percentage markups are now unreasonably in the thousands.

zagfles

NFH wrote: »

All these data roaming charges remain a total rip-off. For example, I recently went to Belarus and got a local SIM card from MTS to put in my iPhone. With this SIM card, 1GB of data costs BYR 30,500, equating to £2.38. If I had used 1GB of data on my Orange UK SIM card, it would have cost me £5,500 on a business tariff or £8,000 on a consumer tariff. The bandwidth was also much better than in the UK - 6Mbps downstream and 3.3Mbps upstream.

There is no justification for data roaming to cost any more than what locals are charged in the visited country. The EU needs to go further and also apply regulations to roaming with EU-based SIM cards outside the EEA, particularly with regard to retail margins. It used to be standard practice until early 2001 for home networks to add a 35% markup to the wholesale cost charged by the visited network; these percentage markups are now unreasonably in the thousands.

Hundreds of thousands % markup in your example! This goes beyond a rip-off, being charged 50% or 100% over the wholesale cost/what the locals pay is a rip-off. Being charged 336,000% is simply a sick joke.

Imagine if any other retailer tried it - "no sir, there's no mistake, that coffee you ordered at the end of your meal really was £8000, you should have checked the price before ordering, it's your fault"

The OFT have rules about excessive pricing, unfair contracts etc, companies are expected to act reasonably and roaming data charges are completely unreasonable. I'd like to see someone take them to court over this, but I doubt the networks would ever allow that to happen...

gjchester

AddieB wrote: »

What is interesting is the EU roaming regulations now dictate what we can be charged and, more importantly, what networks can charge each other.

But rather then charging us data at these rates, networks are packaging them up and selling them onto us a bundles to (hopefully, I assume) make more money.

Yep, Just like when Text messaging costs were forced down by the EU then inclusive texts could not be used overseas, or when call cost came down free access to voicemail vanished.

Each time the EU has forced a regulation in something will go up to compensate. At the end of the day Mobile companies exist to make a profit, and if one area is forced down they will push something up somewhere else to maintain the profit level.

NFH

gjchester wrote: »

Yep, Just like when Text messaging costs were forced down by the EU then inclusive texts could not be used overseas, or when call cost came down free access to voicemail vanished.

Each time the EU has forced a regulation in something will go up to compensate.

That's good then. If unreasonably high roaming charges were previously subsidising free voicemail, then it's welcome news that such a subsidy is coming to an end.

gjchester

NFH wrote: »

That's good then. If unreasonably high roaming charges were previously subsidising free voicemail, then it's welcome news that such a subsidy is coming to an end.

You would have thought so but as EU calls, texts and now data have been reduced in cost then surely with all the things that became now chargable (voicemail calls, inclusive internatinoal texts) there is less need to subsidise anything.

Less subsidy, should mean lower prices. Anyone seen a mobile bill come down lately? Thought not.

Mobile copmpnaies need to make a set profit to keep shareholders happy, think of this more like a baloon, the EU squeezes somewhere, and it simply expands elsewhere.

zagfles

gjchester wrote: »

You would have thought so but as EU calls, texts and now data have been reduced in cost then surely with all the things that became now chargable (voicemail calls, inclusive internatinoal texts) there is less need to subsidise anything.

Less subsidy, should mean lower prices. Anyone seen a mobile bill come down lately? Thought not.

Mobile copmpnaies need to make a set profit to keep shareholders happy, think of this more like a baloon, the EU squeezes somewhere, and it simply expands elsewhere.

Thought not? :rotfl:My mobile bill has fallen every year since I've had it! Try looking up typical mobile call rates 10-20 years ago.

GentleGiant_2

AddieB wrote: »

Vodafone do £8 for 100MB.
http://www.vodafone.co.uk/personal/price-plans/pay-monthly/mobile-broadband-abroad/index.htm

That is if you have mobile broadband - no good if you have data on your phone!

Actually the costs have increased dramatically, not decreased!

Take Vodafone for example.

Old system - £10 for a months data abroad giving 25mb a day - plus 75p for incoming and outgoing calls of up to an hour in Europe & Australia.

New System - £3 a day, with no extra data and instead using your data allowance form your contract. Calls now also come out of your allowance.

So let us assume you have 500mb - previously for the month you would have been given 750mb of data and charged £10, now you are given no extra data and charged £150.

Okay - I accept that the increase from £10 to £150 is based on a month, but any more than 3 days away means you will lose out financially.

Since when is this a good deal for the consumer? It is Vodafone (and others) ripping people off whilst getting good headlines that wrongly say that costs have been slashed.

Now if Vodafone introduced say a monthly charge of £10 or even £30 it would not be so bad - but if you are away for say 3 weeks the costs are massive, especially if you factor in different phones in the family.