If you have ever taken your mobile phone out of your country then network roaming begins. Should you use your phone while abroad then you will be sometimes in for a nasty shock when the bill arrives back at home. Most contract phones are locked to a single network such as Orange, Vodafone, T-Mobile, O2 and when manually trying to hop on to another network you get a message saying that the network cannot be accessed. Take your phone abroad to France for example, you then have a plethora of networks you can connect to. Great… you can use your mobile in most places around the world because of this.
However, ridiculous prices are charged to make and receive calls as well as sending texts. So how much is reasonable? What would you want to pay? Considering I have run up £180 phone bills in a 2 day stop in France, I for one obviously want to see prices cut. It makes you wonder how much of that £180 is taken as profit for both the UK and French mobile networks that were utilised through my calls.
Have you ever been surprised by your phone bill after arriving home from that sunny break?
In the UK right now the phone regulators are trying to restrict the charges made. T-Mobile has has slashed prices by 80% (source – Guardian) while others have tried to follow.
Obviously things are not going to change overnight, but at least steps in the right direction are being made.
There are ways to avoid paying such high costs such as VoIP, foreign SIM cards, SIM cards from other countries that do not charge for incoming calls etc… by doing your research you will find these gems that can save you a fortune. Hopefully in the next year or so we wont have to go through all this hassle as network providers will be reasonably priced (one day).