One of the big disincentives to use your mobile phone overseas is the roaming charge double-whammy: not only does the caller pay to ring you, but you get slugged with a charge as well. Roaming SIM provider TravelSIM has eased that pain a little, offering free receipt of calls in 117 countries.
You can see which countries offer no charges for inbound calls in the list linked below. If your callers don’t want to pay high rates to ring your TravelSIM numnber, they can also optionally contact you using TravelSIM’s 1800 number, which then gets charged to your receiving account at a flat rate of $0.21. TravelSIM already offers cheaper data services in a bunch of European countries, so it might be worth considering, especially if you travel regulalry.
Duncan Hart
Wednesday, August 24, 2011 at 5:46 PMTried it in May 2011 all over Europe & UK – it works though callback mechanism is a little clunky and you have to use the new number they assign you – CAUTION if you have an iPhone make sure you get mini SIM card – when you buy from Aussi Post there is NO indication on packaging which means you will get standard sized SIM which won’t fit iPhone
Molokov
Wednesday, August 24, 2011 at 6:30 PMWhere’s the “ADVERTISEMENT” part of this article’s heading?
There’s other companies out there with products & services (and price points) comparable with TravelSIM. Check out eKit, Truphone, and others.
Shop around, find out which is best for you.
When I was investigating this last year, TravelSIM had some HORRENDOUS reviews around the place (in terms of both call quality and customer service), so I decided to avoid them. I ended up with eKit purely because it was the easiest to arrange of a bad bunch.
It’s still almost near impossible to get a reasonable price for roaming data.
Kate
Thursday, August 25, 2011 at 3:04 PMThe catch is that the Travelsim has an Estonian number which makes it expensive to call them. Had much better luck with BackChat’s GlobalSIM which is an Australian owned company. Good rates, and really held my hand through setting up and testing before I went.
Bob McGregor
Thursday, August 25, 2011 at 7:05 PMI used Truphone for my last 4 week trip to UK. This has the major advantage that it comes with both UK and Australian numbers – so people calling me were able to call me using ‘in-bundle’ minutes from their normal domestic phones – rather than having to call international numbers.
The way the numbering works is that when I make a call to UK, the UK number is presented as CLI; when I call Aus, the Aus number is presented. Calls back to either number find the handset where ever it is!
SMS to/from both UK and Aus numbers works fine too – as does mobile data. Roaming data prices are a bit more expensive than normal domestic rates, but not hugely so – and are much much cheaper than the MASSIVE rates I was charged by Optus on my last expedition to the Northern Hemisphere!
smurfydog
Friday, August 26, 2011 at 12:30 AMThank you to the previous commenters and Angus for your tips.
I had no idea how to approach using my mobile on my upcoming trip to Europe, other than knowing that international roaming on Telstra was not an option.
I didn’t even take my phone last time, but that was 2002 and a lot has changed since then.
Now I’ve got a few options to look at, so thanks guys.