Now that we are in summer, many lucky people have the opportunity to take a well-deserved vacation. These serve to rest, but also to travel to other parts of the world to discover new cities and cultures. People who travel to other places are always wondering if they will be able to use their phone normally thanks to roaming, but it is important to know that roaming is not the same in all countries of the world. We tell you more about this topic.
With roaming we have the possibility of using our mobile phone as if we were in Spain, and that is how most operators sell it. The problem is that this does not work the same everywhere, so it is very important to find out before starting the trip whether roaming is free or not in the country of destination. If not, as we will see below, we can get a pretty big scare on the bill when we return from a trip.
Beware of roaming outside the EEA
As we say, it is crucial to find out about roaming before going on a trip to any destination. How this works will depend to a large extent on the agreements that your operator has signed with the operators of the country of destination, but we can say that most of the important operators in our country allow us to use roaming totally free, as long as we are in a country known as the European Economic Area (or EEA).
All operators divide the countries for roaming into what are called Zones. Depending on the Zone to which the country to which we are going to travel belongs, we will have the right to use free roaming or to have to pay an additional cost. Zone 1 of this list of countries is made up of all the countries of the European Union in each operator, although as we say we will see more or less countries in this zone depending on our operator.
If we take a look at the countries that, for example, Movistar considers Zone 1, we can see how it includes countries such as the United Kingdom (which is no longer part of the European Union since Brexit), the Vatican or Monaco. Vodafone also includes these three countries, but Orange, for example, does not include any of these countries in its Zone 1, so with this operator it would not be free to use roaming in them. Yoigo includes the United Kingdom in its Zone 1, but does not include Monaco or the Vatican. None of these operators includes Andorra, a country that is very close to our territory.
Roaming in Andorra
Outside Zone 1 is when we must be “afraid” when using roaming. In Zones 2 and following is where we will find the countries where roaming is not totally free, so we will have to pay both for calling, receiving calls and surfing the Internet. The list of these countries or how they are distributed by zones will depend on each operator.
If we look at Movistar and continue with the example of Andorra, a call from this country costs 1.82 euros per minute (with a call setup of 1.21 euros), both to call and to receive calls. Vodafone, for example, has the same call establishment as Movistar, but charges 1.69 euros per minute. Things get much worse with Yoigo, which charges 2.54 euros per minute for calling from Andorra to outside the country (43.56 cents established).
If you plan to travel to a country that is outside the European Union or any of these countries, what we recommend is that you go to the page of your operator. Most of these usually have a very simple page where we can enter our destination and in a matter of seconds we will have the necessary information on the screen to know if we can use roaming and if this will have an additional cost.