Mobile use outside EU

vacheron

zagfles said:

vacheron said:

zagfles said:

Be aware that receiving calls, even voicemail, costs £1 a minute. It may be worth keeping the phone in flight mode for the entire holiday, you can turn wi-fi on in flight mode. That might even allow you to use wi-fi calling but not sure about that!

Another good reason to use the e-SIM option I mentioned above. You can completely disable your usual UK SIM while on the plane out so you can't receive expensive calls or accidently use out of region data but you can still use data messaging, whatsapp maps etc. if needed, and enable it again on the flight home.

Just as an idea of the possible prices you could face, when I used to travel to Russia (even before recent events) receiving or sending phone calls using my UK network provider would have cost £3.56 per minute, and data was charged at £5 per MEGAbyte! 

To put that into perspective, that would cost about £40 to send ONE good quality photograph! 

£5 a MB is simply a rip-off, I'd cancel my plan with any provider that charged those rates on principle, even if i didn't intend to use it. 1pmobile at least "only" charge 20p/MB, in both Russia and Morocco. Still massively expensive at £200 per GB. But better than £5000 per GB. 

About time our useless regulator banned such obviously predatory pricing. Or at least force them to specify the cost per GB, as that's what virtually all monthly plans/boosts price their data usage in. 

The company was Virgin Mobile.
I was going to say that this was a few years ago, but I have just checked and it's now actually more! 
Had to use the Ireland site as Virgin Mobile UK has now switched to O2, but 7 euros per MB!.

... and not just Russia. It includes the USA and the ENTIRE REST OF THE NON EU WORLD!

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400ixl

Rather than the speculating, this is what 1p mobile charges are for Morocco

Calls and texts from the UK to Morocco
Dialling code	+212
Calls	20p a minute	Calls to Morocco landlines and mobiles
Texts	9p a message
Picture message (MMS)	30p a message

Costs when you are roaming in Morocco
Calls to standard UK (01, 02, 03, 07), Morocco and worldwide landlines and mobiles	£1 a minute
Calls to UK, Morocco and worldwide non-geographic and special numbers	£2 a minute
Receiving calls	£1 a minute
Receiving and retrieving voicemail messages	£1 a minute
Texts to UK, Morocco and worldwide mobiles	25p a message
Receiving texts	Free
Picture messages (MMS) to UK, Morocco and worldwide mobiles	45p a message
Mobile data	20p a MB
Boosts	Your Boosts do not apply in Morocco
Our roaming partners	IAM Medi Telecom WANA

vacheron

So just £1.60 per decent photo. 
Absolute bargain by comparison. 

Of course, the problem is not sending photos, it's when friends / family decide to send you an HD video over whatsapp, or your phone decides that it needs to upgrade a bunch of apps in the background. 

I get round this by having a £0 spend cap on all my family phone accounts just in case.

400ixl

vacheron said:

Of course, the problem is not sending photos, it's when friends / family decide to send you an HD video over whatsapp, or your phone decides that it needs to upgrade a bunch of apps in the background. 

I get round this by having a £0 spend cap on all my family phone accounts just in case.

Neither of which will cost anything if roaming is off and wifi on as the OP plans.

The spend cap being on is a good point though.

gtr_jonathan

If your phone can use eSims, buy a cheap data only plan from a website like Airalo. Or get a local sim card where you're going!

goodValue

zagfles said:

Be aware that receiving calls, even voicemail, costs £1 a minute. It may be worth keeping the phone in flight mode for the entire holiday, you can turn wi-fi on in flight mode. That might even allow you to use wi-fi calling but not sure about that!

Pardon my ignorance, but what is the difference between putting the phone in flight mode, and disabling roaming,
and under what circumstances would you choose one or the other?

vacheron

goodValue said:

zagfles said:

Be aware that receiving calls, even voicemail, costs £1 a minute. It may be worth keeping the phone in flight mode for the entire holiday, you can turn wi-fi on in flight mode. That might even allow you to use wi-fi calling but not sure about that!

Pardon my ignorance, but what is the difference between putting the phone in flight mode, and disabling roaming,
and under what circumstances would you choose one or the other?

Flight mode will physically disable all physical internal radio frequency transceivers, including Cellular, WiFi, Bluetooth and Ultra Wideband, whereas with roaming turned off, the phone is simply told not to connect to any non-UK cellular network. 

• You would use airplane mode when you wanted to ensure that your phone's transmissions will not adversely affect the electronic and communications systems of equipment such as, but not limited to, aeroplanes.

• You would use roaming off when you don't want to use the phone with international cellular networks, but otherwise want to use the phone as normal. 

goodValue

Flight mode will physically disable all physical internal radio frequency transceivers, including Cellular, WiFi, Bluetooth and Ultra Wideband, whereas with roaming turned off, the phone is simply told not to connect to any non-UK cellular network. 

As I don't need calls or text, but may need wiFi, I should turn Roaming off then?

Would this also stop UK voiceMail messages being received/stored, or would I need to do something else for that?

zagfles

goodValue said:

Flight mode will physically disable all physical internal radio frequency transceivers, including Cellular, WiFi, Bluetooth and Ultra Wideband, whereas with roaming turned off, the phone is simply told not to connect to any non-UK cellular network. 

As I don't need calls or text, but may need wiFi, I should turn Roaming off then?

Would this also stop UK voiceMail messages being received/stored, or would I need to do something else for that?

Does your phone have an option to turn Roaming off completely, as opposed to Data Roaming? Turning Data Roaming off won't stop the phone connecting to foreign networks for calls/texts and probably voicemail will initially go to your phone and could be charged. 

You can turn wi-fi on in flight mode. Flight mode will initially turn everything off but you can then turn wi-fi back on. Some planes have wi-fi so this is useful for that. 

eDicky

goodValue said:

Would this also stop UK voiceMail messages being received/stored, or would I need to do something else for that?

No, to avoid charges when roaming it's probably best to disable voicemail with your network.