EU-Roaming with Mozillion and Spusu

TMSG

We've just returned from a 6-week trip from the Baltics/Finland. Plenty of time and opportunity to check roaming with the two SIMs in my wife's phone.

Data was fine with both. We had a feeling that Spusu was quicker in getting a connect and also somewhat faster once connected. Both SIMs gave us a mix of LTE/5G and I couldn't see any consistent pattern. Interestingly, though Estonia is billed as the Digital King, the mobile speeds were often a little disappointing when compared to LT or LV. Finland was the fastest.

Now calling. Moz only includes local calls (ie LT to LT) and calls back to the UK in its roaming whereas Spusu supports full roaming (ie LT to FI or to FR etc). Well, Moz was a disaster anyway. We had booked the whole trip with AirBnB accommodation and often we had to call the hosts on arrival to get the check-in details. In all four countries we had repeated problems with Moz to connect to local numbers (UK numbers worked), often receiving recorded messages in the local patois (which we didn't understand) probably giving us some explanation or hint as to why it didn't work. Spusu had no such problems and if we hadn't brought that SIM with us we would have been in big trouble.

SMS was a similar picture. Some texts would go through with Moz but many just wouldn't. Again, Spusu was fine.

Last but not least I have a global eSIM from Eskimo in my Pixel and in my (pretty limited) tests this worked well.

Moz was fine for data (which is good as we have a 100GB/month deal with them) but Spusu was much more reliable overall. If only they could once and for all resolve the non-arriving OTP codes problem…

mazjohn108

Very interesting as I am out of contract with EE and looking to change. I want roaming included and was thinking of going with Spusu but not if there is still a problem with OTP codes. Back to the drawing board!

marlot

My EE contract is coming to an end. I object to staying around for outrageous annual price rise on top of an expensive service.

I travel quite a bit, so roaming is important to me.

I'm leaning towards 1p mobile or Talk Home (both on EE).

My wife's on 1p and roaming has worked flawlessly.

Frozen_up_north

I am with 1p Mobile and it has worked well for me in Spain and Jersey. You get a max of 14 GB of "EU" roaming data (EU plus Channel Is and I of Man). I use their non contract, 30 day rolling arrangement. Data speeds here in the UK are about the same as EE. In direct side by side comparison between 1p and EE I was seeing typically 100 Mb/s down and 10 to 20 Mb/s up on 5G, that is in our rural village… The nearby site is not a proper 5G one, like most it is bolted on a 4G back end. 1p of course uses the EE network.

zagfles

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82164203#Comment_82164203

Yes we've used 1p mobile all over the EU and it's always been fine, we usually only need a few GB so just buy a 1/3/5 GB boost for a few £ on my phone and use a hotspot if my wife needs data.

samtaylor99

I've been using Spusu for about a year now - moved from 1p mobile. Frequent trips to Spain without issue and no problems with UK use at all. I had read about the OTP issues prior to moving to Spusu but I have yet to experience this. I mainly use banking OTP's in the UK and Spain and they all arrive as expected - is this the OTP problem others are experiencing ?

RoamQuietly

@mazjohn108 if the OTP thing is what's putting you off, a dual SIM phone gets round it. Keep a cheap PAYG sim on the number your bank has in the second slot, data roaming off on that line, and let Spusu do the data. Receiving texts in the EU is free on most UK networks so the codes still land.

Maegi

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82164203#Comment_82164203

1p mobile are a PAYG service with monthly bundles. They don't have a pay monthly (contract option)

Maegi

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82164389#Comment_82164389

I think it was sending short codes and also incoming using Spusu's number range. If you port in a number then incoming texts/calls from anyone not on Spusu (possibly EE too) are routed via the donor network first anyway so unlikely to be an issue.

Maegi

I t

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6686219/eu-roaming-with-mozillion-and-spusu

One thing to always remember is that any connection that you get that doesn't do a full credit check is essentially a prepaid platform with bundles. This means that they always require a connection to use your bundle and ensure you don't use anything you haven't paid for.

When roaming on prepay, you are basically relying on real-time billing between the local network and your home provider. This means that some local networks will refuse a connection, some will have limited services e.g. data only and others will work fully. You can usually compensate by trying different local networks but this is not always the case.

zagfles

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82188591#Comment_82188591

No mobile service will work without a connection 🤣

I've never had a problem roaming with PAYG, and I travel a lot. Where have you had problems?