Roaming: what is it, what is it for and how much does it cost to have data service while traveling?

Most people don't even know about Roaming, but today you are told that it is in charge of communication between two operators to provide you with a connection or signal, but when it is active the rates may go up, which we don't you will like it very much.

Here, we will explain the distribution of prices according to the operators, showing you the 5 operators the most important in Spain . And if we want to anticipate you, it is because not all have the same prices and that one is perhaps more economically feasible than another.

We will also teach you the tips that you should use if you are one of those people who are enemies of overspending. The more we save, the more we can enjoy our trips.

What is roaming and what is your operator's service for?

The word roaming is the English translation of Roaming , of which we can see the word very common in our phones , because it is widely used in the field of telecommunications for indicate that the wireless device left the network coverage he assigned as primary.

Well, this concept can be clarified a bit. In mobile telephony, it is used to indicate the possibility for clients to use a different network when they go outside the determined range, it happens more frequently when they have to go out of the country. The network identifier in this case is the sim card , who is responsible for communication between the different operators.

You can also see this mode (Roaming), in some WiFi networks , which means the client can roam to any other wireless network. In this case, the way to identify yourself is by means of a personal username and password, which must be shared by different networks.

How much does it cost to have a service while traveling with my mobile operator?

We show you how to find out the cost of your service with each of the largest telephone companies in the country:

Movistar

If we are Movistar customers and want to travel, we will have to take into account that the prices increase from the moment Roaming is activated on our device. To view these prices, we have to access the Movistar page .

Here we can find the country we want to travel to and select the type of service we use (contract or prepaid). When we click on "Search", a box will appear detailing what we have to pay in addition to activate this service in the country indicated.

Telstra

Yoigo's prices are a little different from Movistar's and are organized as follows:

Roaming rates for Internet coverage

The tariffs for the EU and associated countries are 0 euros / national tariff. This rate will not charge us even half a euro for roaming service , we can therefore take advantage of many of these services in this range without having to pay anything else.

More explicitly, we can say that if we travel to any country, within the European Union, Yoigo will only charge us for the consumption of our navigation , as if we were in Spain, and no additional cost will be attributed to us.

Yoigo divides the countries by zones. The countries belonging to zone 1 are as follows:

Germany; Slovenia; Malt; Austria; Spain; Norway; Belgium; Greece; Netherlands; Bulgaria; Hungary; Poland; Cyprus; Ireland; Luxemburg; Croatia; Iceland; Czech Republic; Denmark; Italy; Romania; Estonia; Vatican City; Sweden; Slovakia; Latvia; France (including Martinique, Guadeloupe, Saint Martin and French Guyana); United Kingdom (including Gibraltar); Portugal (including Madeira and the Azores); Liechtenstein; Lithuania; Finland

While the rates for the rest of the world have a cost of 10,89 euros / MB . If the country we have in mind is not in the list above, we should know that leaves - low we will have an additional cost, so Yoigo identifies the rest of the world as Zone 2.

Roaming rates for call and SMS coverage

Just like browsing the Internet on Yoigo, consider that all calls and messages received in countries located in zone 1, will have no additional cost , whereas if we do them, they will be.

For calls made, the following elements are taken into account:

If the countries we are going to visit are in zone 1, it will have the same rate as that used in the country (Spain). Whereas if they are in zone 2 it will have a cost. From 2,54 euros / minute .

This also applies to sending messages, as follows:

Countries in zone 1 will have no increase in their tariff, while countries located in zone 2 will have a cost of 0,36 euro for each message . This is also true for sending multimedia messages (SMS).

We can consult more the tariffs, via the next link .

Jazztel

The operator Jazztel offers the following rates for those who wish to travel or leave their country of residence. The first thing we need to know is that all countries that are in zone 1 are not assigned any additional cost to their tariff .

While the countries of zone 2 will have an additional cost of 7 euros for every 100 MB consumed, and for standard contracts that cover countries in zone 2 and zone 3 a cost of 12,10 euros for each MB.

To consult in more detail the tariffs for each country or for each service, visit the next page .

Orange

For Orange, roaming-type data consumption is distributed in Go Europe, Mobile Internet, Contract or Card, Everywhere . Go Europe is the type of roaming implemented for the countries of the European Union, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway, whose data consumption cost is 1 euro for 100 MB.

If we switch to the Mobile Internet Roaming type, this will cost € 12,1 / 1 MB, including this type of roaming covers all countries of the world. For the Contract or the card, which also covers all the countries of the world, it costs € 6,05 / 500 KB.

Finally, Everywhere roaming, which covers countries such as Russia, Andorra, Switzerland, the United States, Canada, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Chile, Morocco, Japan and China, has a cost of 7 € / 100MB.

For more information, visit the page .

Vodafone

For now, Vodafone offers a roaming service for people going to the United States where the tariffs have a cost equal to that of the country . This tariff is called Tariff for the countries of the European Union, where you have to pay 1/200 MB €.

We can also take advantage of other rates such as Viaja Mundo fare and the price Vodafone World . When the first at a cost of 15/200 Mo € , of which the countries concerned in this range are those belonging to the Zone 2 list, and in other cases of the same tariff a charge of 15/20 Mo € is invoiced.

The second tariff that we show has three types, one of which has a cost of € 6,05 / 1 MB , where it only covers zone 2. The second with the same cost which covers zone 3 and the last one where 18 must be paid, 15/1 Mo € covering zone 4 .

To find more information, we must visit the official website .

What advice can I apply to spend less by using my tariff outside the country?

As we have already seen, tariff costs can increase significantly when we use our phone with active data usage. For this reason, we bring you some tips that you should use to avoid these charges:

Let's turn off all data and look for a Wifi network

Operators charge for the data consumption, but if we don't consume the data, they won't charge us anything, we therefore have to turn off the data consumption and find a Wi-Fi network where we can navigate and communicate at no additional cost.

Let's look for open Wi-Fi networks

Many countries have Wi-Fi networks open to the public, which are completely free, so we recommend that you use an app. called Free Zone Wi-Fi which lets you know which networks are open and how far away you can get to them, as well as connect to those networks automatically.

This app can be found available for Android and iOS .

Let's use the app to communicate with calls and messages

To finish with these tips, it is strongly recommended that you use applications such as WhatsApp, Facebook, Telegram to establish communication with other people, as they do not necessarily need to consume data, since they can be used via a Wifi network.

Do I have to manually turn on roaming or is it automatic? What if I don't want it?

Roaming is a predestined feature in most devices, we can therefore always see that it is activated automatically , but this can be disabled manually , as it may happen that we want to activate it and the only way to do it manually.

Configuration and settings

To avoid high data consumption, we can configure our phone with a limit , so that consumption is normalized and does not exceed more than what we are prepared to pay.

To do this we go to "Settings "And look for "Use of data" a notice will appear that we click on "Accept" and limit according to what we want our consumption to be. As we have seen in the notice, the data connection or their consumption will be deactivated simply by exceeding this limit in order to avoid any additional consumption.

Activate and deactivate the service

This is the best solution in most cases, so if we want to turn off the service, we go to mobile and search "Settings", then we select "Wireless connections and networks / mobile networks" and uncheck the boxes where it says "Mobile data" and " Data roaming «.

If you have any questions, please leave them in the comments, we will get back to you as soon as possible, and it will be a great help for more community members as well. Thank you!