EU Roaming limited number of days

kitaro_kenny_g06

Hi there, 
I travel in EU regularly and sometimes i am outside the UK more than 4month. I can't find a provider that allows me to use my roaming withing my monthly data, call, text allowance longer than 60 days. 
They keep saying you must buy  local SIM but the problem is I need my British number to receive texts from bank, call banks and other places to do the admin stuff. 

I can't believe all Brits living in Spain, France, Italy, etc. come back to the UK every 60 days.  Vodafone even charged me after I cam left the UK. 

Is there any provider in the UK that doesn't charge for roaming after 60 or 90 days? 

There must be a provider that allows longer time limit or even unlimited all year around roaming as part of the monthly allowance. I believe even O2 starts charging after 60 or 90 days being in the EU. 

Please advise. Thanks for help. 

born_again

Does your phone have a E-Sim?

If so use one of the e-sim providers 👍

Frozen_up_north

The problem is not just the UK networks, overseas networks do not like the idea of visitors using their home network in preference to theirs.

Be like most ex-pats and use WhatsApp to keep in touch.

kitaro_kenny_g06

Frozen_up_north said:

The problem is not just the UK networks, overseas networks do not like the idea of visitors using their home network in preference to theirs.

Be like most ex-pats and use WhatsApp to keep in touch.

WhatsApp? Which bank or council or other organisation uses WhatsApp? Do you know any? 

kitaro_kenny_g06

born_again said:

Does your phone have a E-Sim?

If so use one of the e-sim providers 👍

Does it make any difference? eSim follows the same deals they set in their systems. I think the only advantage of eSim is that can be activated outside the UK and you don't need to be in the UK to activate it. Correct me if I am wrong, please. Have you been using eSIM yourself and they didn't start charging you for roaming after 60 or 90 days? 

PHK

kitaro_kenny_g06 said:

Frozen_up_north said:

The problem is not just the UK networks, overseas networks do not like the idea of visitors using their home network in preference to theirs.

Be like most ex-pats and use WhatsApp to keep in touch.

WhatsApp? Which bank or council or other organisation uses WhatsApp? Do you know any? 

You’d be surprised. My bank NatWest does, so does the locsl council and even Tesco uses WhatsApp and Messenger. 

jimjames

kitaro_kenny_g06 said:

I can't believe all Brits living in Spain, France, Italy, etc. come back to the UK every 60 days.  Vodafone even charged me after I cam left the UK. 

If they're living in Spain/France etc then they're probably using local SIMs. It's not very common use to be away for 4 months at a time so not really a scenario they need to support. WhatsApp works even if you're using data plan from a different number

d123

kitaro_kenny_g06 said:

Hi there, 
I travel in EU regularly and sometimes i am outside the UK more than 4month. I can't find a provider that allows me to use my roaming withing my monthly data, call, text allowance longer than 60 days. 
They keep saying you must buy  local SIM but the problem is I need my British number to receive texts from bank, call banks and other places to do the admin stuff. 

I can't believe all Brits living in Spain, France, Italy, etc. come back to the UK every 60 days.  Vodafone even charged me after I cam left the UK. 

Is there any provider in the UK that doesn't charge for roaming after 60 or 90 days? 

There must be a provider that allows longer time limit or even unlimited all year around roaming as part of the monthly allowance. I believe even O2 starts charging after 60 or 90 days being in the EU. 

Please advise. Thanks for help. 

The only solution would be to port your number to a VOIP provider like A&A, you can then use a foreign SIM card just for data and use an app like Groundwire for calls/texts from your UK number.

£12 to port and then £1.44 a month.

https://www.aa.net.uk/voice-and-mobile/number-porting/mobile-porting/

fiish

Another alternative is that many UK providers now support eSIM, so if you can get only physical SIMs in your overseas location, you could move your UK line to eSIM. This assumes you're using one of those phones with dual SIM that takes only one physical SIM (i.e. SIM + eSIM, or dual eSIM)