Mobile Plans With Included Roaming
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When Is a Mobile Plan With Roaming Included a Good Deal?
Many Swiss mobile plans include large mobile roaming allowances for travel. This moneyland.ch guide explains what you should pay attention to, and when it makes sense to use plans with roaming included.
Swiss mobile service providers offer many different mobile plans that include roaming allowances. These plans are convenient, because you can use your phone while traveling abroad without having to first buy a roaming bundle or activate a roaming option.
What are mobile roaming allowances?
A mobile plan with roaming allowances includes a certain amount of roaming data /and or a certain number of call minutes and SMS messages for getting online or making calls while traveling in other countries. These allowances only apply to specific countries. Typically, the countries included are primarily European countries, though Turkey, the US, Canada, Puerto Rico, and some other countries are sometimes included. There are big differences between mobile carriers.
Making calls from Switzerland to other countries is not roaming
It is important to understand that international phone calls – calls you make from Switzerland to another country – do not qualify as mobile roaming. The roaming allowances included in mobile plans do not apply to international phone calls. Calls from Switzerland to other countries are normally billed on a per-minute basis. You can only make international phone calls at no extra charge if you have a mobile plan or option that includes international phone call allowances.
Which Swiss carriers offer mobile plans with included roaming allowances?
The three Swiss telecom network operators, Swisscom, Sunrise, and Salt, all offer mobile plans with roaming allowances. Additionally, most other Swiss carriers have mobile plans with roaming allowances in their product lineups. You can find a detailed overview of these offers in the table further down.
For this article, moneyland.ch analyzed a total of 77 different mobile plans with roaming allowances from 16 different Swiss carriers. The lineup of plans with included roaming allowances is particularly large at Yallo, with 12 such plans, and Wingo with nine.
How big are the roaming allowances?
There are big differences between individual offers. There are offers that include just 100 megabytes of roaming data per calendar month, while the mobile plans with the highest roaming allowances include 40 or more gigabytes of roaming data per calendar month. Some of these offers are advertised as having unlimited roaming data. However, in practice the Internet speed is heavily throttled once you reach a certain limit (typically to 128 or 256 Kbps).
Data roaming allowances normally apply on a per-calendar-month basis.
Mobile plans most commonly include data roaming allowances, but there are also offers that include allowances for a certain number of roaming call minutes, for receiving calls while roaming, for making calls within your travel country, and for making calls from your travel country to Switzerland.
How much data do I need?
It can be very difficult to estimate how much data you actually need. If you avoid streaming music and (especially) video, and downloading or uploading large files, then you normally will not transfer a whole lot of mobile data. Typically, a person who does not use music or video streaming or make large downloads will not use more than between five and 10 gigabytes per week. In many cases, the amount of data needed is much lower than that.
In which countries can I use my roaming allowances?
The roaming allowances of all 77 mobile plans analyzed by moneyland.ch cover mobile roaming in Austria, Frances, Germany, and Italy.
Many mobile plan roaming allowances cover roaming in all EU countries, the United Kingdom, and Norway. That is the case with plans from Swisscom, Coop Mobile, Migros Mobile, Spusu, and Wingo.
Roaming allowances included in plans from Aldi Suisse Mobile, Digital Republic, Galaxus Mobile, Lebara, Quickline, and Yallo cover Turkey, the US, and Canada in addition to EU countries, the UK, and Norway.
Salt and its subsidiaries Gomo, Lidl Connect, and Post Mobile exclude many European countries from the Europe roaming zone. Sunrise uses separate lists of countries for each of its mobile plans. Depending on the Sunrise plan, the list may include just a few EU countries.
Some more expensive mobile plans have several different roaming allowances, with large volumes of data for the most popular travel destinations, and smaller data allowances for certain other countries.
Pay attention to allowances for Balkan countries
If you travel to Balkan countries, it is important to check roaming allowances carefully. Croatia and Slovenia – both of which are part of the EU – are often excluded from roaming allowances. Mobile plans from Salt, Gomo, Lidl Connect, and Post Mobile, on the other hand, do include these countries. Some plans include both a Europe zone allowance, and a separate travel zone allowance that covers Croatia and Slovenia.
Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia are generally not covered by the roaming allowances included in Swiss mobile plans.
Which mobile plans have mobile roaming allowances?
Together, the 16 Swiss carriers included in the analysis offer a total of 77 mobile plans with included roaming. The cheapest of these costs 13 francs per month, and includes two gigabytes of roaming data. The most expensive plan costs 135 francs per month, and includes 40 gigabytes of roaming data.
You can get a full comparison of mobile plans that include roaming by email using the form below. The comparison gives you a clear overview of the basic monthly fees, the amount of roaming data included, and the countries in which the included roaming data can be used. While the comparison generally accounts for two offers per carrier, it is important to note that there are many other plans with roaming allowances.
What happens when I exhaust the included roaming?
What happens once your included allowance is used up depends on your mobile plan.
Some mobile plans throttle the Internet speed to 128 or 256 Kbps, but do not charge you additional fees. The slow speed is sufficient for texting, streaming music, and sending email, but is unsuitable for fast web browsing or streaming videos. You normally have the option of buying supplemental data bundles for higher-speed Internet.
Many mobile plans, and particularly those from Swisscom, Coop Mobile, Digital Republic, Galaxus Mobile, Migros Mobile, Lidl Connect, and Wingo, block your Internet connection once your allowance is used up. You have the option of reactivating the Internet connection by buying a data bundle.
Sunrise blocks Internet access once the included allowance is used up, unless you have activated mobile roaming at standard rates in your Sunrise preferences. Lebara and Yallo have a default limit of zero francs for roaming. If you leave the default setting in place, then extra roaming charges on top of what you pay for your plan or for roaming bundles are not possible. But it is possible to change the settings in the customer portal. It is beneficial to check your settings to find out whether or not additional roaming charges are possible.
There are also carriers that do not block your Internet connection, but charge you standard roaming fees for any additional calls or data that exceed your allowances. That is particularly likely with plans from Salt and Post Mobile.
Are mobile plans with included roaming worth it?
A detailed moneyland.ch analysis shows that mobile plans with large roaming allowances do not make sense for most holidaymakers. Getting suitable roaming bundles is often the cheaper solution.
In many cases, a mobile plan with large roaming allowances only pays off for people who use at least several dozen gigabytes of data per year while roaming in foreign countries. But there are big differences between offers, with the data threshold above which a plan with included roaming makes sense ranging from just a few gigabytes to over 200 gigabytes.
There are many factors that collectively determine whether or not this kind of plan makes sense. The most important of these are the plan's basic monthly fee, the prices of roaming bundles, and the size of the included roaming allowance.
Could I benefit from a plan with included roaming?
Mobile plans with included roaming allowances may be expensive, but they are also practical. People who prefer not to have to deal with buying roaming bundles may find the simplicity of these plans appealing.
A cheap mobile plan with a few gigabytes of roaming data included is also beneficial if you live near the border. That is because your phone may automatically connect to foreign networks.
Additionally, plans with roaming included may be offered at special promotional prices, in which case they are more likely to pay off.
Are there any alternatives?
There are a number of alternatives for staying connected while traveling.
- Use a travel eSIM: Using special travel eSIMs can often save you a lot of money compared to using roaming offers from Swiss mobile carriers. You can find more information in the moneyland.ch travel eSIM study.
- Buy a SIM card from your travel destination: Using a prepaid mobile offer from a local carrier in the country you are visiting is often much cheaper than using mobile roaming.
- Use free wi-fi hotspots: Using the complimentary Internet connections available in many cafés, restaurants, hotels, trains, buses, and public areas for data-intensive tasks lets you minimize mobile roaming costs.
More on this topic:
Compare Swiss mobile plans now
Data roaming: Useful tips for staying online while traveling
Ralf Beyeler is the telecom expert at moneyland.ch and also covers other areas of personal finance.
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