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EE Trombone Roaming

mikeliuk

ULTIMATE Member
Do all UK service providers use Trombone Roaming, at least for packet data?

Recently in California, I was surprised to see EE packet data routed via the UK as I don't believe I've seen this with Three UK or Virgin Mobile when roaming before.

What I was expecting was Roaming onto the local carrier network (services provided locally and billing/usage details forwarded to my supplier) per the below reference, and not Trombone Roaming as mentioned right at the end of the page.

Routing packet data via the UK could be one reason that EE's costs compare well to other UK service providers but at the disadvantage is that the full benefit of the Roaming onto local infrastructure is not realized due to tromboning increasing latencies beyond what is acceptable for some applications.

I guess I should provide some explanation of why trombone roaming might be a bad idea. You might be in the US communicating with a server in the US and international packet links are very expensive and in constraint, therefore you don't want to send data to the UK which does not need to go to the UK, and worse than that the unnecessary data traffic to the UK then needs to come back across an international link to arrive at an endpoint very near the source of the data.

 
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I don't think many providers have local break out (LBO) for data, or if they do then it's likely to be a country specific agreement and likely not something to expect in all countries
 
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The standard is for data to be tunneled back to your home network so that they can apply any content filters mutually agreed, count the bytes for billing, etc. It would be unusual for traffic to break out locally.

In fact roaming SIM cards in China are the one legitimate way of accessing the internet without the great firewall of China getting in the way.
 
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I only ever roam in Ireland these days, but while there I find myself with an IP of my home UK operator, and I can access geoblocked UK-only services like BBC iPlayer. Over that short distance, it's fine, although irritating when Irish online services read me as being in the UK and start serving me "international" content or geoblocking me.
 
Routing packet data via the UK could be one reason that EE's costs compare well to other UK service providers
Said no-one ever! :)

I remember a few years back when I was in Morocco. A friend on Vodafone could use his UK allowance for £6 a day. I seem to recall EE were offering a data add-on that gave you 20MB for 24 hours for around that price. Yes - megabytes.

I do wonder if, as the one UK network without any sister networks abroad (I'm aware that Deutsche Telekom and Orange have small shares in BT, but I'm not sure how much difference that would make), EE may be in a worse position than the other UK networks when it comes to being able to offer competitive roaming charges.
 
Three charges £6 per megabyte for international roaming in many countries, e.g. Canada. That's either £6,000 or £6,144 per gigabyte, depending on exactly how they count a GB.

Then again, with Lebara it's £14.99 per megabyte, so 2.5 times as expensive again.
 
I only ever roam in Ireland these days, but while there I find myself with an IP of my home UK operator, and I can access geoblocked UK-only services like BBC iPlayer. Over that short distance, it's fine, although irritating when Irish online services read me as being in the UK and start serving me "international" content or geoblocking me.
Same here but I really noticed the latency when I was in Italy, can't imagine using it e.g in USA, Australia etc
 
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Three charges £6 per megabyte for international roaming in many countries, e.g. Canada. That's either £6,000 or £6,144 per gigabyte, depending on exactly how they count a GB.

Then again, with Lebara it's £14.99 per megabyte, so 2.5 times as expensive again.
That's a fair point - outside of Go Roam destinations, Three are not competitive either.

I notice for some places (I just re-checked Morocco) EE's website doesn't list a per MB charge and just advises to buy a data add-on instead, yet I can't see any data add-ons they sell now that cover Morocco. I guess you only find out the per MB charge when you get there and receive the advice text.
 
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