Data roaming schemes in Europe start getting a bit more sophisticated as the years tick by and also cheaper bit by bit. This year, my home network operator of choice has introduced data roaming bundles that can be activated by SMS messages. Data connections are then either cut once the included data bucket has been used up or throughput is reduced to the bare minimum, in both cases preventing overcharging and bill shock. Very nice.
One of the offers is 2 Euros a day for 10 MB of data when roaming in a European country. Quite enough for use with Opera Mini, which uses a network side compression server, eMail with limited automatic content downloading (Profimail, K9 mail, etc.) and the occasional GPS ephemeris data download when I start the navigation and mapping application. Not sure, if the 10 MB would suffice if I used a full browser. Probably not.
So for mobile use, that's a price I can quite live with for occasional international traffic. For PC use, however, the tariff is still way too high so I still resort to local prepaid SIM cards with data options for that. The Prepaid Wireless Internet Wiki continues to be an important resource.
Hi Martin, I recently got stung for £30 when my new N8 lost the wifi signal whilst downloading a podcast in Frankfurt airport and handily transferred to T-mobile……. The warning SMS texts were too slow. Charging £1.28 a MB (like my carrier does) is legalised theft! If voice is now 36.6p/min and I think voice uses 16kbps? (Depending on AMR?) Doesn’t that make voice 36p per 960kb? (i.e. a 3rd of the cost of data?)
There’s no price competition and thus no incentive for operators to compete…..