# EU roaming



## Canalsman (Dec 11, 2022)

I know this is a topic discussed previously but during further research today I have happened upon this provider:









						Popit - The No Nonsense Network
					

The No Nonsense Network




					www.popitmobile.co.uk
				




They piggy back on the EE network and there are no data usage restrictions when roaming in the EU. You can use your full pay monthly allowance just as you would in the UK.

To quote from their website:

_Roaming in the EU.

We do not cap the data usage. If you have 1GB,3GB,10GB,30GB or 100GB you can use all of this allowance in the EU.

Roaming duration of up to 6 months at a time.*_

Their asterisk says to contact them for further details. I have emailed for clarification.

They have confirmed that their SIMs can be used in mifi devices.

I intend swapping to them from 3 with whom I have become most disenchanted. Their 4g network is now desperately slow in many locations even when the signal strength is good. It appears to be a lack of bandwidth. I suspect they are investing so heavily in 5g that the remaining infrastructure is now under resourced.


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## yeoblade (Dec 11, 2022)

Canalsman said:


> I know this is a topic discussed previously but during further research today I have happened upon this provider:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


I'll be giving them ago next month, as addition to my Phone o2 Sim,  in my Mifi router. I know where I'm going the signal isn't too good on the carrier o2 use in that village in France.
 I think I'm right in saying different Uk SIMs roam on to different roaming network but the network they roam on to varies with who they have a deal with .


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## yeoblade (Dec 11, 2022)

.


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## SimonM (Dec 11, 2022)

I’m waiting until late Feb 23 when my 3 deal ends so I can get away from them. Very dissatisfied when they changed my account and cancelled roaming.


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## witzend (Dec 11, 2022)

yeoblade said:


> .


Just have a look at what Lebara have to offer they use Vodafone


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## Canalsman (Dec 12, 2022)

witzend said:


> Just have a look at what Lebara have to offer they use Vodafone


Very poor on the EU roaming front. From their website:

_Customers with an active prepaid package can use either 2, 5, 7 or 10 GB data in EU from their packages._


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## Canalsman (Dec 12, 2022)

yeoblade said:


> I'll be giving them ago next month, as addition to my Phone o2 Sim,  in my Mifi router. I know where I'm going the signal isn't too good on the carrier o2 use in that village in France.
> I think I'm right in saying different Uk SIMs roam on to different roaming network but the network they roam on to varies with who they have a deal with .


When roaming typically you will find more than partner in a given location.

It pays to search for mobile networks and see what's on offer for a location. The speed offered can differ widely between carriers.


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## Canalsman (Dec 12, 2022)

SimonM said:


> I’m waiting until late Feb 23 when my 3 deal ends so I can get away from them. Very dissatisfied when they changed my account and cancelled roaming.


I'm desperate to get away from 3. Over the past few months I have had very poor download speeds on 4g at different locations. Sometimes despite good signal strength their network is unusable. I have a mifi on EE as a backup which is seeing increasing use.

I plan to change my phone to Popit (EE) and my mifi to Asda Mobile (Vodafone).

Asda Mobile have an offer at the moment with double the data allowance for the same monthly payment. This will continue as long as your monthly payment continues. Well worth a look.


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## jagmanx (Dec 12, 2022)

Canalsman said:


> I know this is a topic discussed previously but during further research today I have happened upon this provider:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Thanks we will be back in uk in April and off to Sweden and Norway for 3 months .
This looks a real possibility because of the almost no limit for said time.
Please continue to post on this .


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## QFour (Dec 12, 2022)

I bought an Orange sim in Spain this year because the WiFi on the site was rubbish. €30 for 135gb had to use in a month.


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## Derekoak (Dec 12, 2022)

Interesting! They are more expensive than Smarty who we are with,  even when smarty is capped when roaming, we went away reducing our 3 number sims on smarty's (rolling 30 day, no contract) to 12gb for 8 pounds each, compared to popit at 10gb for 13 pounds. However Smarty claimed to cut us off after 2 months. We were away for 3 months and they did not, but a 6 month promise is worth money.
 So my question is can you reduce your popit plan to zero without the sim being cancelled and restart whilst abroad?
 I was imagining 2 months away with Smarty then reduce them to zero on hold and start Popit for the next 6 months away in say Romania.


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## yeoblade (Dec 12, 2022)

Derekoak said:


> Interesting! They are more expensive than Smarty who we are with,  even when smarty is capped when roaming, we went away reducing our 3 number sims on smarty's (rolling 30 day, no contract) to 12gb for 8 pounds each, compared to popit at 10gb for 13 pounds. However Smarty claimed to cut us off after 2 months. We were away for 3 months and they did not, but a 6 month promise is worth money.
> So my question is can you reduce your popit plan to zero without the sim being cancelled and restart whilst abroad?
> I was imagining 2 months away with Smarty then reduce them to zero on hold and start Popit for the next 6 months away in say Romania.


I have read somewhere that you can reduce the contract to a nominal fee of around 50p per month to keep your number and then start up again after a dormant period.


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## witzend (Dec 12, 2022)

yeoblade said:


> I have read somewhere that you can reduce the contract to a nominal fee of around 50p per month to keep your number and then start up again after a dormant period.


Thats possible with GifGaf as long as you leave some paug money on the sim then you can buy a bag an use it just before you go


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## 2cv (Dec 12, 2022)

SimonM said:


> I’m waiting until late Feb 23 when my 3 deal ends so I can get away from them. Very dissatisfied when they changed my account and cancelled roaming.


I think that they will lose a lot of customers over it. We used them in the US and the roaming was their main selling point.


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## jagmanx (Dec 12, 2022)

2cv said:


> I think that they will lose a lot of customers over it. We used them in the US and the roaming was their main selling point.


Yes, its not easy as the sim provider probably pays extra.
My pitch would be to offer 3 months (Don't mention Brexit..or the war) free (included) roaming in Europe and up the monthly fee slightly.
But as Manuel would say "I know nothing" about marketing etc !


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## Val54 (Dec 12, 2022)

Popit sounds good although I couldn't find any mention of picture charges. Very mixed and limited reviews of their customer service. We are still using Virgin sim only deals for the time being. Didn't incur any roaming charges last year despite heavy usage in France on phones and tethered iPad. Virgin do charge 50p per pic so we have to remember to be on wifi. Probably better deals to come but at the moment 75gb per month with unlimited text/calls for £14, price increase next April.


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## Canalsman (Dec 12, 2022)

Val54 said:


> Popit sounds good although I couldn't find any mention of picture charges. Very mixed and limited reviews of their customer service. We are still using Virgin sim only deals for the time being. Didn't incur any roaming charges last year despite heavy usage in France on phones and tethered iPad. Virgin do charge 50p per pic so we have to remember to be on wifi. Probably better deals to come but at the moment 75gb per month with unlimited text/calls for £14, price increase next April.


If you were looking at the Trustpilot reviews they were few in number, 17 if I recall correctly, and some were glowing.

I asked a question via chat yesterday, Sunday, and made contact immediately and got an answer in seconds.

Today I received an email reply early this morning about my query on EU roaming duration. See my new post for details.

Couldn't ask for quicker or clearer responses.


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## Canalsman (Dec 12, 2022)

Roaming in EU.

This is the response I received:

_Hi Chris, we have a soft limit of 6 months roaming in the EU from the UK. But it is only soft.

Kind Regards
_
Sounds like they're pretty flexible ...
_
_


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## Val54 (Dec 12, 2022)

Canalsman said:


> Roaming in EU.
> 
> This is the response I received:
> 
> ...


That all sounds promising, I'll certainly have another look at them before we head off in 2023.


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## st3v3 (Dec 12, 2022)

Val54 said:


> Virgin do charge 50p per pic so we have to remember to be on wifi.



If you have a data allowance and use whatsapp to send a picture it should be included.

The 50p will be for a picture attached to an ordinary text (MMS)


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## Val54 (Dec 12, 2022)

st3v3 said:


> If you have a data allowance and use whatsapp to send a picture it should be included.
> 
> The 50p will be for a picture attached to an ordinary text (MMS)


Yes that's true, its just remembering to use it


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## Geek (Dec 13, 2022)

Canalsman said:


> I'm desperate to get away from 3. Over the past few months I have had very poor download speeds on 4g at different locations. Sometimes despite good signal strength their network is unusable. I have a mifi on EE as a backup which is seeing increasing use.
> 
> I plan to change my phone to Popit (EE) and my mifi to Asda Mobile (Vodafone).
> 
> Asda Mobile have an offer at the moment with double the data allowance for the same monthly payment. This will continue as long as your monthly payment continues. Well worth a look.


Asda moved from EE to Vodafone. The coverage is worse, the data speeds are much, much worse. A few weeks ago, Asda mobile hiked their prices hugely. At that point I left.

I've had fairly good results with Three.


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## Wooie1958 (Dec 13, 2022)

Me first then the wife was with Three for many many many years. mainly because they were the first to offer free roaming.

We ended up out of sync with our contracts and i renewed with Three last year just before their cut off date for free roaming so thought i`d be ok then a couple of months later i got an email saying i was on a 30 rolling contract that increased dramatically unless i renewed however the new contract did not include free roaming, i told them to shove it and went over to Tesco mobile ( O2 ) in January this year on a 24 month fixed contract that included free roaming ( 25GB in EU ).

Tesco changed that for newer customer in June this year but anyone who was already in contract with them stays on free roaming.



			https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/news/2022/06/tesco-europe-roaming-charges/
		


The wife was stuck with Three and got stung for the £2 per day charge for roaming for the last 10 days of a France jaunt we had earlier this year which more than doubled her monthly contract price.

She`s now left Three and gone with Plusnet mobile which includes free roaming but is capped (12GB in EU ).

The Tesco roaming partners service in France is fantastic and i had a very very very fast 5G for the majority of the time and we happily watch all of Her Majesty`s funeral whilst up the Pyrenees through the Fire Stick on the TV whilst tethered to my phone although it did use 9.75GB just for the funeral, it was well worth it.


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## SimonM (Dec 13, 2022)

I will be looking closer to what’s on offer in a few months to get away from 3, I am a Virgin media user and I see they do a £30 unlimited data, minutes and texts. Sounds like the ultimate to me

But - how good is Virgin’s coverage here, there and everywhere?


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## Val54 (Dec 13, 2022)

SimonM said:


> I will be looking closer to what’s on offer in a few months to get away from 3, I am a Virgin media user and I see they do a £30 unlimited data, minutes and texts. Sounds like the ultimate to me
> 
> But - how good is Virgin’s coverage here, there and everywhere?


They piggy back on Vodafone in the UK so not as good as EE if you want 5g, we found in France that we could always pick up at least one Virgin partner network.


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## Wooie1958 (Dec 16, 2022)

I found it best to manually change the roaming partner if the service isn`t that good rather then relying on the auto select.

In France i found overall that Orange F was by far the best with SFR a pretty close second then Bouygues Telecom and Free lagging way behind


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## yeoblade (Dec 16, 2022)

I've been trying to find cell coverage mapping for the French networks, with some success, but they just tend to show where the transmitters are or which roads(only) have coverage:

Cellmapper.net      cell sites

Perf.com   Road coverage

Any others?


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## Canalsman (Dec 16, 2022)

Wooie1958 said:


> I found it best to manually change the roaming partner if the service isn`t that good rather then relying on the auto select.
> 
> In France i found overall that Orange F was by far the best with SFR a pretty close second then Bouygues Telecom and Free lagging way behind


Agreed. This is what I do too.


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## yeoblade (Dec 16, 2022)

Wooie1958 said:


> I found it best to manually change the roaming partner if the service isn`t that good rather then relying on the auto select.
> 
> In France i found overall that Orange F was by far the best with SFR a pretty close second then Bouygues Telecom and Free lagging way behind


Not sure I can do manual on the Moho router.


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## Wooie1958 (Dec 17, 2022)

Canalsman said:


> Agreed. This is what I do too.



It was you Chris that brought this to my attention several years back and it`s really very easy to do in the phones settings     

We`d always put up with the slow speeds abroad thinking it was just one of them things you had to suffer when using their roaming partners.

Then, i saw a post on here where you mention if could be done manually so i tried it, chose one of the other available networks and it worked a treat


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## Canalsman (Dec 17, 2022)

Wooie1958 said:


> It was you Chris that brought this to my attention several years back and it`s really very easy to do in the phones settings
> 
> We`d always put up with the slow speeds abroad thinking it was just one of them things you had to suffer when using their roaming partners.
> 
> Then, i saw a post on here where you mention if could be done manually so i tried it, chose one of the other available networks and it worked a treat


What goes around ... !


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## TJBi (Dec 20, 2022)

yeoblade said:


> I've been trying to find cell coverage mapping for the French networks, with some success, but they just tend to show where the transmitters are or which roads(only) have coverage:
> 
> Cellmapper.net      cell sites
> 
> ...








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