If you’re travelling abroad this year in Europe, it is important to understand your mobile phone plan as getting it wrong may mean a hefty phone bill when you land back in the UK. As summer gets underway, there are plenty of deals to make the most of.
Data roaming is when your mobile phone connects to a network in a different country, since UK network providers have contracts with providers abroad it means you won't lose connection. However, since Brexit, this once cheap or even free perk can now cost users money - even if you pay for a monthly plan.
An eye-catching deal is an £8 offer from SMARTY, a pay-as-you-go provider that means users can avoid locking into lengthy contracts. For less than £10 each month, tech shoppers will get 50GB of data and unlimited texts and calls to use in the UK - not to mention that this includes 12GB of data ready to use in the EU.
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Lebara is another provider that offers roaming for a fraction of the price, and here at Mirror Tech, it's regularly on our radar. Its £25 per month Unlimited data plan (based on a 30-day rolling contract so you don't have to enter a contract) that includes 100 international minutes on calls taken from the UK. If you're going on holiday then it's super simple to add a roaming add-on to your Lebara SIM.
Heading over to the drop-down roaming page you can enter your holiday destination to add on affordable data. We chose Spain and picked an 8-day data deal that will give users a 5GB extra data allowance for only £10 - that's £1.25 per day a lot cheaper than rivals. Lebara also includes fair-use roaming on select plans and hotspots like Spain, France, and Greece for free in its 'Roam Like Home Destinations'.
While those are the two providers we'd urge shoppers to look at, existing customers should be aware of their data allowance, and it varies per provider. Thanks to research from Experts at eSIM provider, Holafly, we've rounded up all of the inclusive roaming data allowances from O2, EE, Three Mobile, Vodafone, Tesco, and giffgaff.
O2
- Shop O2 SIM deal here
Anyone already paying for an O2 monthly plan can use up to 25GB of data in the EU, as part of its fair use policy. If customers exceed this data roaming limit over a 63-day period while abroad, they will then be charged £3.50 for every additional GB of data used.
EE
EE charges under £2.50 a day for EU roaming data- Browse EE SIM deals, here
EE customers can use their data allowance in the European roaming zone for £2.47 per day up to 50GB per month as part of their monthly contract. However, it’s not clear from their site how much you would have to pay should you exceed the 50GB fair usage allowance.
For those travelling abroad for two weeks who intend to use data every day, this works out to nearly £10 cheaper, compared to paying £34.58 if you were to stick with the £2.47 daily flat rate. For anyone looking for both a holiday and UK deal, EE is currently running a huge data boost offer which you can read about here or buy online.
Vodafone
- Vodafone has dropped 50% off its 150GB deal - buy here
Vodafone charges their contract customers £2.42 a day or £12 for 8 days or £17 for 15 days to roam in the EU, with a data limit of 25GB. Pay As You Go customers can purchase a Europe Roaming Extra from £12 for 8 days.
GiffGaff
giffgaff includes 5GB of EU roaming data use for free on all plans - just don't exceed it otherwise you'll be charged (SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)Customers on a pay-as-you-go or contract won't pay additional fees to use their mobile abroad, as long as they don't exceed the 5GB fair-use limit. Yes, it's a lot less than rival providers. Beyond this Giffgaff charges 10p per MB for data usage, equating to a £10 surcharge for every additional GB of data used abroad.
A number of network providers have no extra charges for customers; however, they do have fair-use data caps. These include iD Mobile, which has a 30GB cap and an extra usage cost of 10p per MB (£10 per GB) and Lebara, which also has a 30GB cap, but an extra usage cost of just 0.2p per MB (£2 per GB).
Tesco Mobile
Tesco Mobile customers face no roaming fees and no fair use data caps until 2025, so they can use their data as they normally would at home. However, shoppers should be warned that taking out a deal with one of its supermarket Clubcards gets you a much better price.
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Three
Three Pay Monthly customers will be charged a daily roaming fee of £2 per day, with a limit of 12GB of your plan. Beyond this, data roaming is charged at 10p per MB, meaning customers would be charged £10 per additional GB of data used abroad.
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