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Roaming Abroad, using your phone while Abroad: A Comprehensive Guide


3 PAYG is giving 12 GB go roam for £12.

Black Friday deal!
 

3 PAYG is giving 12 GB go roam for £12.

Black Friday deal!
Can also now buy as an eSIM directly which is good for people going abroad last minute!
 
Take a Three PAYG SIM or a smarty SIM with you.

Have a great time, I've never been to Norway myself but it's very much on my bucketlist :D

These roaming SIMs usually have a roaming broker, 3 AT is very common. Tele2 SE is another common one (Spusu use Tele2 as a broker for their EU roaming).

The broker works by 'selling' their roaming agreements as a service to other networks/providers. That way, smaller 'full' MVNOs like Sky, Spusu, Lyca can have their own roaming agreements. These brokers also work with eSIM companies.

The downside to this is, especially when an MVNO uses a roaming broker, your traffic gets routed back to the broker and then back to the UK. So ping times go sky high - and especially further away, doing anything can be a chore.
Spusu is a great example of this. I was getting ~30ms pings in France whilst roaming on iD (iD use Threes roaming agreements and not a broker, a direct connection back to the UK). Spusu was giving ~150ms pings as it was jumping to Sweden and then back to the UK.

An even worse example, from my recent US trip, was Honest Smart SIM. Their roaming broker is Proximus & TIM IT (depending on whatever it feels like it seems).
Whilst using TIM IT, the pings were 500/600ms, as traffic was going back over the Atlantic to Italy, then back to the UK.
My Three PAYG SIM, was again a direct link back to the UK, 90ms ping.
Any idea how the pings are on 1p mobile? Thanks!
 
Any idea how the pings are on 1p mobile? Thanks!
Never used EE abroad.

Couldn't get it to register in the US at all. It connected to TMobile for all of about 5 seconds and then died.

Didn't have my EE plan when I was in France in January, signed up in Feb.

Three was giving:
USA (Verizon & AT&T) 90ms
France (Bouygues) 30ms
Spain (Movistar) 50ms
Italy (WindTre) 65ms
Ireland (3 IE) 30ms
 
Never used EE abroad.

Couldn't get it to register in the US at all. It connected to TMobile for all of about 5 seconds and then died.

Didn't have my EE plan when I was in France in January, signed up in Feb.
Cheers mate. You reckon 1p use the same roaming routing as EE?
 
Should be pretty decent then I guess. Might give them a try now with the Black Friday deals :)
1000123443.webp



They give a pretty good guide on roaming partners too. I use their site as a guide for the partners EE has.
 
View attachment 21235


They give a pretty good guide on roaming partners too. I use their site as a guide for the partners EE has.
Yeah... I'd choose them in a heartbeat if they'd do more than just 14gb EU roaming. The 30gb with iD are just super useful as I travel quite a lot. :/
Sadly, the only other EE MNVO (apart from Lyca) with a decent roaming allowance is spusu... But the pings and call quality seem to be pretty bad
 
EE EU roaming is max 25gb?

Interestingly:

Pakistan

Telenor
Ufone
Jazz possible limited access
Mobilink possible limited access

Last two are the same.

The first are two are totally crap.

The only network worth using in Pakistan is Zong and no UK network (or travel data sim) allows roaming on it.

Yet in other countries (I only checked a few, e.g. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Spain etc), the roaming coverage is a lot better.
 
Yeah... I'd choose them in a heartbeat if they'd do more than just 14gb EU roaming. The 30gb with iD are just super useful as I travel quite a lot. :/
Sadly, the only other EE MNVO (apart from Lyca) with a decent roaming allowance is spusu... But the pings and call quality seem to be pretty bad
I've added a section on roaming to the spreadsheet pretty quickly. There's holes for the networks i cant pluck out my brain but most are on there. Under Roaming Type.

Direct is what you want of course.
 
Yeah... I'd choose them in a heartbeat if they'd do more than just 14gb EU roaming. The 30gb with iD are just super useful as I travel quite a lot. :/
Sadly, the only other EE MNVO (apart from Lyca) with a decent roaming allowance is spusu... But the pings and call quality seem to be pretty bad
Also FYI iD Mobile has no cap on roaming until further notice :)
 
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