Dealing with the loss of unlimited Eu roaming

I was just looking at buying a EE 24 month 150gb contract with one smart benefit for 25 pounds a month. In the legal small print it said in the roam abroad smart benefit paragraph that while abroad there was a fair use policy of a 50gb per month cap.
I thought all these you tube makers were on Ee with this roam abroad smart benefit using full data. Even the unlimited contract still has the same smart benefit which if you choose roam abroad appears to be capped at 50gb.
We are off for 3 months to Scandinavia and have checked that our smarty contracts will cease after 60 days. What if we got a 3 with legs 24gb once off sim that lasts 2 years. Set it up before we go then take it out and wrap it in foil or something for 2 months then replace one of our smarty sims with the 3 with legs for the missing month? I believe the 3 with legs has a 60 day limit abroaf, but when does the 60 days count from?
 
I was told about EE's 50Gig fair use policy when I went to Spain in January and again to France in May. on both occasions they then sent the standard 'Welcome to France..." text messages hen we got to France and on both occasions these messages said that they had suspended the fair use policy due to the pandemic.

Perhaps not much use in the long term but may give some consolation of you are away shortly.
 
My Tesco Mobile 30GB contract just let me carry on as normal up to 25GB with no extra charges and the manual connection i did on OrangeF was 4g all the time no matter how remote we were especially up in the Pyrenees (y)

Tethering the laptop when needed was very fast as well :)

The wife however is still tied to Three for another couple of months and she got the £2 per day imposed for the last 10 days of our time over there which basically tripled her monthly payment, she also manually connected to OrangeF but strangely her connection was not as good as mine even though we have identical phones which are also the same age o_O

As soon as she can she`ll ditch Three and it looks like she`s coming over to Tesco Mobile which runs on O2.
 
Derekoak said:
I was just looking at buying a EE 24 month 150gb contract with one smart benefit for 25 pounds a month. In the legal small print it said in the roam abroad smart benefit paragraph that while abroad there was a fair use policy of a 50gb per month cap.
I thought all these you tube makers were on Ee with this roam abroad smart benefit using full data. Even the unlimited contract still has the same smart benefit which if you choose roam abroad appears to be capped at 50gb.
We are off for 3 months to Scandinavia and have checked that our smarty contracts will cease after 60 days. What if we got a 3 with legs 24gb once off sim that lasts 2 years. Set it up before we go then take it out and wrap it in foil or something for 2 months then replace one of our smarty sims with the 3 with legs for the missing month? I believe the 3 with legs has a 60 day limit abroaf, but when does the 60 days count from?
Click to expand...
I have used Three 24gb with legs sim and their revised info is that now only 12gb is usable abroad. I buy Reglo mobile in France from LeClerc , but they only allow 5gb usage outside of France and does not work in Andorra.
 
I think our plan now is to stick with Smarty as it is monthly so after 2 months away we will suspend the next payment and restart when we get back to the UK. For the missing month we will buy one or 2 telenor Sweden prepaid sim cards which are easily available and free. Then we will choose to "refuel" from the fastpris menu 40gb for a month data and unlimited calls/ texts for 299 swedish króna (23.90 pounds ) or 100gb 349swk or 5gb 149 swk. They allow use as a hotspot and all of the EU and EEA (Norway) is the same deal as in Sweden. So we might keep the sim and use it for other long trips in the eu after the first 2 months with Smarty
 
Derekoak said:
I was just looking at buying a EE 24 month 150gb contract with one smart benefit for 25 pounds a month. In the legal small print it said in the roam abroad smart benefit paragraph that while abroad there was a fair use policy of a 50gb per month cap.
I thought all these you tube makers were on Ee with this roam abroad smart benefit using full data. Even the unlimited contract still has the same smart benefit which if you choose roam abroad appears to be capped at 50gb.
We are off for 3 months to Scandinavia and have checked that our smarty contracts will cease after 60 days. What if we got a 3 with legs 24gb once off sim that lasts 2 years. Set it up before we go then take it out and wrap it in foil or something for 2 months then replace one of our smarty sims with the 3 with legs for the missing month? I believe the 3 with legs has a 60 day limit abroaf, but when does the 60 days count from?
Click to expand...
We chose to go ahead with ee on a 24month contract. It was £25/month with one smart benefit (EU roaming) but their annual inflationary ‘adjustment’ recently increased it to £27.3 which I think is still very competitive given the alternatives options out there. It actually gives you 160GB/month (not 150) and has been completely reliable since March this year, 20 countries so far.

We use it in a Netgear Nighthawk mobile router connected to a ‘Poynting’ antenna (brand name). It’s a particularly good combination especially in out of the way places with few phone masts. I’ve linked a John & Mandy video explaining this combination previously but here it is again. No commission 🙄.


If we leave the van, I put the Nighhawk in a rucksack so we can be online on our phones while exploring and it works well without the antenna anywhere with mobile phone signal.

Only in Turkey did we need to remove the sim to avoid massive roaming charges. Turkcell sims worked a treat everywhere and the ‘tourist payg sim package’ currently costs £35/month for two sims (20GB’s of data on each sim). Two is the maximum amount one tourist is allowed to buy (Turkcell shops everywhere and rated the best provider) and you need to fill out a form and show your passport. They give unlimited phone calls to one another (if used in phones), but I mostly put one Turkcell sim in the other half’s phone and the other in the Nighthawk. That way we had internet on the move and the ability to WhatsApp call each other on the phones whenever needed, but also Wi-Fi the internet on our phones if we were both close to the Nighhawk in the rucksack.

Only one criticism of the Turkcell sim, certain areas of Turkey block some social media sights, happened to us on our last day!

When we left Turkey for Chios, 7.5 mile ferry ride, the ee sim sparked back up faultlessly as it’s Greece. One problem though, if you have the ee sim in your phone or mobile router set to automatic search, you can find yourself latched on to an expensive provider, as we left Chios on the ferry to Piraeus, the wife’s phone latched on to Turkcell as the ferry passes Turkey close enough to pick it up as the strongest signal. Luckily her phone wasn’t on roaming.

Can’t fault ee so far and because we were on Turkcell for 10 days, our ee data allowance for the rest of this month is very healthy. I can feel some binge watching coming on! Ordinarily we can watch 3-4 hours of streamed tv/day, social media including face timing family, internet browsing and still have data spare by the end of the month .

Another good thing about the ee roaming ‘smart package’ is that we’ve found BBC iPlayer is accessible, so too are Netflix and Amazon Prime Video in their U.K. configuration. We can also watch live streaming U.K. tv (whenever there’s anything worth watching 🙄) through our iPads on the Freesat app, can’t seem to get that on the Avtex or Amazon Firestick? I’m thinking the ee package must come with built in VPN?

I’ll need to rethink for Albania and Montenegro, as they aren’t covered by ee’s European smart roaming, but I’m sure local sims will be available just like Turkey. Keep you posted. 👍🇮🇲
 
SimonM said:
I have used Three 24gb with legs sim and their revised info is that now only 12gb is usable abroad. I buy Reglo mobile in France from LeClerc , but they only allow 5gb usage outside of France and does not work in Andorra.
Click to expand...
I'd be interested to know where that information comes from, because it's not what Réglo Mobile say on their website. In Zone 1 (EU countries plus a few others including UK), the full package data allowance can be used. Andorra is in Zone 2 and Internet usage there is prohibitively expensive.
 
TJBi said:
I'd be interested to know where that information comes from, because it's not what Réglo Mobile say on their website. In Zone 1 (EU countries plus a few others including UK), the full package data allowance can be used. Andorra is in Zone 2 and Internet usage there is prohibitively expensive.
Click to expand...
It was told to me by a sales person in LeClerc after I found out it didn’t work in Andorra when I was there for 2 days last October
 
SimonM said:
It was told to me by a sales person in LeClerc after I found out it didn’t work in Andorra when I was there for 2 days last October
Click to expand...
The tariff sheet does not even show 5GB for Andorra. Outside Zone 1, all Internet use is chargeable and you therefore have to have the requisite credit available on your account, without which it will indeed not work.
 
GeoffL said:
Eek! Thanks for the warning. However, they also say that you are exempt the daily charges if they have agreed this or your pay-monthly plan started prior to 1st October 2021. This means that we can continue to use our allowance both in the EU and in Australia until we change our plans -- and I'll make sure that continued free "Go Roam" is a condition of us staying with Three...

That said, they've also removed the ability to use you phone as a personal wifi access point when roaming outside the EU -- so I'll need to continue using my Telstra MiFi in Oz.

Here's some more in-depth info about Three's "Go Roam".
Click to expand...
Someone just liked my post to which this is a reply, so I felt it only fair to give an update. Three have exercised their right under the T&Cs of the advanced plan I was on to give notice and end my contract. They gave me three options:
  1. Sign up for a new Three contract;
  2. Switch to another provider; or
  3. They would move me to a default tariff if I did nothing.
I phoned them up and asked for a PAC code; telling them I'm leaving unless I could retain free "Go Roam" in Australia. While they weren't prepared to do that, they eventually persuaded me to stay with them by cutting the monthly payments to half price for the full term of the new contract.
For various reasons, I suspect we won't be able to get over to Oz for the next year and so the lack of "Go Roam" is moot. Hopefully, free roaming will be available when it's time to look again. In the meantime, if we go over to EU or to Oz, we'll divert our phones to a UK VoIP 'landline' number; use local SIMs and pick up calls via the Internet.
 
  • Like
Reactions: REC
We are now both back on free roaming for when we go over the channel (y)

I`m with Tesco Mobile and joined before the 16th June cut off date so my free roaming stays until the end of the contract as long as i don`t change or upgrade and the wife has gone over to Plusnet which similarly gives free roaming :)
 
  • Like
Reactions: GMJ
Us too Graham.

Our pay as you go contracts ran out officially but EE has just let them run at the current price, so we keep the free roaming option...all for a mighty £7.80ish a month each!
 
I've not read the whole thread but 1p Mobile is worth a look, runs on the EE network.

£10 a month for 10gb, £15 for 50gb, both with unlimited calls and texts. I'm not aware of any Euope roaming restrictions apart from the usual vague 'fair use'.

www.1pmobile.com

UKs cheapest PAYG mobile tariff

1pMobile offers great value with 1p a minute, 1p a text and 1p a MB. Excellent coverage, free SIM and you can keep your existing number.
www.1pmobile.com www.1pmobile.com
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Users who viewed this discussion (Total:0)

Back
Top