INTERNATIONAL ROAMING – HOW DOES IT WORK?

The first thing you need to do if you know you'll be travelling abroad, is make sure you have International Roaming enabled for your handset.

Roaming is defined as the ability for a cellular customer to automatically make and receive voice calls, send and receive data, or access other services when travelling outside the geographical coverage area of the home network, by means of using a visited network. This is possible because your home operator has a ‘roaming agreement’ with an operator in the visited country that enables you to use its network.

Your mobile provider will not have a mobile network in the country you’re travelling to so whenever you use your mobile abroad you are ‘roaming’ on the foreign provider’s network. The foreign provider charges your provider a charge for your use of its network. Your provider will then pass this charge on to you.

Unlike at home, the consumers are charged for receiving a call when travelling abroad. This is because the person making the call pays exactly the same as if you were in your country, but the foreign mobile provider charges your mobile provider in your country an additional charge for use of its network when both making and receiving calls.

While charges for receiving a call are generally less than those for making a call you should still check what these charges are with your provider before travelling. Using text messages can be a useful way of reducing the impact of high international roaming rates, because charges for text messages are lower than those for voice calls.

If the visited network is in the same country as the home network, this is known as National Roaming. If the visited network is outside the home country, this is known as International Roaming or Global Roaming. There is also Inter-standard roaming, meaning the visited network operates on a different technical standard than the home network.
Remember, when you call home or any other country, you have to type in the international access code and the correct country code along with the telephone number, omitting the leading zero.