When it comes to roaming in Europe as an EU citizen, there is one sore spot on the continent: Switzerland. As the country is not part of the union, EU roaming does not apply to it and it depends on your prepaid or postpaid contract if voice and data roaming while being in Switzerland is included. While my German network operator of choice has always included Switzerland in EU roaming, a lot of other German network operators and MVNOs have not. Also, the French network operator of choice of a member of our household did not have it in the contract for many years, either. But fortunately, things have changed quite a bit this year.
One member of the household has a monthly contract with a German ‘no-frills’ MVNO. Until about a year ago, Switzerland was a no-go for roaming with that contract. Fortunately, the operator at least had a landing page in place to book a pass when the smartphone registered to a Swiss network. This way, no data is unwittingly used. Even more fortunately, the MVNO now includes data roaming to Switzerland in their standard plan. That solves like 80% of the problem and only leaves the issue of voice calls to and from people who don’t yet use an over the top messenger compatible with our ideas of privacy.
Another 15% of the problem is now solved by the French mobile network operator we have a contract with. I recently did some research in the fine print of new contracts of that network operator and found that new contracts now included Switzerland in the same bucket as EU countries for both data and voice. So we changed from our old contract we had for many years that did not include Switzerland at all to a new monthly contract that includes Switzerland for less money than we paid before.
That leaves the 5% of the problem, i.e. people calling on the German line while being in Switzerland. The only cheap solution I could find for now is to let it ring and then call back on the French line. Not ideal, but switching operators and risk loosing the phone number is not worth it. At least not yet…