Tariffs on the move: How to save roaming costs

Outside the EU, roaming costs can still be high. As the holiday season begins, there is some movement in the tariff jungle.

Outside of the EU can Roaming with prices beyond 15 euros per megabyte still sensitive expensive sein.

Additional packages can help. The offers of domestic mobile phone providers are changing at the start of the holiday season.

The second largest provider Magenta offers data packages from Tuesday in 50 countries outside the EU, including the Balkan countries, Turkey and Thailand, 5 Euro for a Gigabyte an.

In this way, the Austrian subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom also wants to bring its prices closer to those of the numerous international e-SIM providers who in recent years have in some cases significantly undercut the tariffs for additional packages offered by domestic mobile operators when roaming in third countries.

Digital SIM cards

In addition to purchasing SIM cards with the appropriate data volume locally in the holiday countries, the data tariffs for the digital SIM cards that can already be used on many devices are often the cheapest option for surfing outside the EU borders.

Providers of such E-SIM-Tariff,including Airalo, Holafly and Maya mobile, have sprung up in recent years and also have unlimited data plans for many holiday destinations in their portfolio. The prices vary greatly, so it is worth comparing.

The domestic market leader A1 jumped with Red Bull Mobile Data has also already jumped on the e-SIM bandwagon and offers gigabytes of data in over 100 countries in the brand’s app at prices between 2 and 15 euros.

Also Three has a mobile phone subscription that works via digital SIM cards Up3 cheap data packages for popular travel destinations in the portfolio. 1 GB of data in Turkey costs around 3.50 euros.

Horror bills are a thing of the past

In the EU The EU roaming regulation in force since 2017 („Roam like at home“) additional costs for making calls and surfing in other EU countries have largely been made obsolete. Complaints about unpleasant surprises when roaming in the EU have been virtually non-existent in recent years, says AND-Consumer advocate Daniela Zimmer.

Cost limit

The fact that the time of horror bills is over is also due to the worldwide 60-euro cost limit for data roaming. If it is not deactivated, mobile phone customers will be charged 80 percent the border via SMS.

This has “well contained” the problem area, says Zimmer. Since 2022 the cost limit also applies to Satellite Internet connections on cruise ships and in airplanes. Zimmer: “In these areas, there have been isolated cases of extremely high bills.”