As from July 3, 2019, Coop Mobile plan users are able add the EU Pass option to their plans if they choose to. The option costs 10 francs per month and lets users call and connect to the Internet both in Switzerland and when roaming in European countries. The bottom line: This option lets Coop Mobile users make unlimited phone calls within EU countries (applicable to phone calls to Switzerland or western Europe and to incoming phone calls). The mobile plan includes 2.5 gigabytes of mobile data per month, and the option extends those 2.5 gigabytes to data roaming in Europe. Unused data allowances do not expire, and are carried over to the next month.
Also from July 3, 2019, users of the Mini, Maxi or Mega mobile plans from M-Budget Mobile can add the europePLUS roaming option to their plans. For 10 francs per month, the option lets M-Budget mobile plan users call and use the Internet in Europe just as they would in Switzerland. Depending on the plan, that is 600 megabytes, 3 gigabytes or 5 gigabytes of data roaming. The option also lets M-Budget customers make unlimited calls to EU countries at no extra cost (connections within Europe, within Switzerland and incoming calls).
The options for Coop Mobile and M-Budget Mobile both stem from the same source – mobile service provider Swisscom. Swisscom powers both Coop Mobile and M-Budget Mobile in partnership with Coop and Migros.
Verdict by moneyland.ch telecom expert Ralf Beyeler
At first glance, being able to use your local Swiss phoning and Internet allowances while traveling abroad looks like a good deal.
But both the Coop and Migros offers have a major disadvantage: The option is based on calendar months. That is not ideal for your average tourist which only uses mobile roaming during their summer vacations. A more customer-friendly approach would be for the option to be based on anniversary months – that is 30 days from the time the option is activated.
The 60-day required notice period is also not customer-friendly, in addition to being somewhat unusual. What it means for users is that depending on when they activate the option, they may pay up to 30 francs for it. That is a lot for a roaming option which they may only need for 7 or 10 days while traveling abroad.
The basic logic behind the new roaming options is sound, but the implementation is poor.
More on this topic:
Mobile plan and roaming comparison
