The IT Nerd

I’m catching up some things since my trip to the UK this past week and one of the things to do was to answer this question:

IT Nerd, I read about your trip to England and I do have one question. You used a SIM from a local mobile phone network and an unlocked phone. Can you really save that much money when traveling to England versus roaming with Bell, Rogers, or Telus? 

Thanks!

Thanks for the question. The short answer is yes. You will pay way less than with Bell, Rogers, or Telus. The long answer goes something like this. I used a T-Mobile SIM from EE to get me the following for £10.

• 100 minutes of talk time.
• 400 texts
• 1GB of data

Later in the week, I got more of the same for another £10 for a total investment of £20. That meant that I effectively got the following:

• 200 minutes of talk time.
• 800 texts
• 2GB of data

At today’s exchange rate, that’s $35 Canadian for all of that.

Now let’s see what the big three telcos offer starting with Bell. According to this link you have two choices. Since the UK is in “Zone 1” you can pay these prices if you simply want to pay as you go:

• Voice: $2.00 per minute
• Text: $0.75 a text
• Data: $8 a megabyte.

Not exactly cheap. Our other option is to go with assembling a travel bundle for voice and data that aren’t cheap either and don’t come anywhere close to the cost and feature set of what I got from the UK.

Next up is Rogers. Now Rogers like Bell has two choices according to this link (make sure to choose Europe). The first choice is to pay as you go, and here’s what you will pay:

• Voice: $2.00 a minute
• Text: $0.75 a text
• Data: $9.99 a day for 20 MB of data

Your other option is to use a talk, text and data travel pack which range from $60 which gets you this:

• 40 minutes of talk time.
• 150 Sent texts
• 40MB of data

Or you can go for $100 for 31 days which gets you this:

• 100 minutes of talk time
• 150 Sent texts
• 100MB of data

So just like Bell, Rogers is not even close to what I paid this past week.

Finally, there’s Telus. If you choose to pay as you go, here’s what you’ll pay:

• Voice: $1.50 a minute
• Text: $0.60 a text
• Data: $5.00 a MB

Okay. That’s cheaper than Bell and Rogers. But still more expensive than what I paid. Now Telus does offer travel packs starting at $50 which gets you this:

• 50 minutes of talk time
• 150 Sent texts
• 100MB of data

Going up to $85 gets you this:

• 100 minutes of talk time
• 200 Sent texts
• 300MB of data

Finally, going to $150 gets you this:

• 200 minutes of talk time
• Unlimited sent texts
• 500MB of data

Now that’s still not anywhere close to what I paid, but these options are the best of the big three carriers. So if you must roam with Bell, Telus, or Rogers, it looks like Telus is the winner on that front. But if you really want to save money while traveling in Europe, take it from me. Have an unlocked phone (or get your cell carrier to unlock it for you seeing as they have to do it if you request it and are willing to pay) and buy a SIM from a local cell phone carrier in the country that you’re visiting. You will save lots of money and you will be able the use your smartphone the way you want to without worrying about running up a huge bill or running out of your voice or data allotment. To me, it’s a no brainer.

This entry was posted on November 23, 2014 at 9:40 am and is filed under Tips with tags Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.