Calling in a foreign country (Roaming)
Trip Start
Unknown
1
33
52
Trip End
Ongoing
Phnom Penh,
Cambodia
Monday, June 23, 2008
Calling with your cellular phone when you're abroad is not difficult and it's very handy, but it can bring in high costs. Calling when you're in a foreign country needs a small preparation, just as going on a holiday does. On this page we will help you with this preparation in order to lower the costs as much as possible.
Preparation
You're planning to go abroad and you want to take your cellular phone with you. Naturally, you can go to a foreign country and use an arbitrary network, but it's more wise to surf on the internet in order to look up and print the tariffs for calling in a foreign country. This will take you 5 minutes (literally) and it will save you a lot of money!
The links underneath will bring you directly to a summary of all tariffs of all Dutch and Belgain providers. Choose your provider and (when indicated) your type of connection from the summary underneath. A new window will pop up with the tariff page of your provider. We recommend to print these tariffs and take these with you as a vademecum when you go abroad.
Tariffs for calling abroad for Dutch providers:
KPN Mobile & Hi
Vodafone
T-Mobile
Orange
Telfort Subscription and Telfort callingtogether
Telfort Prepaid
Tariffs for calling abroad for Belgian providers:
Proximus subscription
Proximus prepaid (Pay & Go)
Mobistar subscription
Mobistar prepaid
Base subscription
Base prepaid
When you looked up and printed the tariffs it's a good idea to mark the cheapest tariffs. Because of this you can easily see which network is the cheapest when you want to call in a foreign country.
Turn off your voicemail!
It's very important to turn off your voicemail when you're abroad. You can turn off your voicemail at the costumers service and sometimes by using the instruction code ##002# [send] (cancel all active forwardings). When you never turned your voicemail on or off you have to call the costumers service, because the first time you cancel your voicemail this has to be done at the costumers service.
Make sure that all phone numbers in your phonebook are international phone numbers
Most people only stored the normal internal phone numbers into their phone. In the case of the Netherlands for example 0612345678 or in the case of Belgium 0496123456. In that case you have to make sure that all phone numbers become international phone numbers. This isn't difficult to do. Remove the first 0 of the phone number and change this number into +31 (for the Netherlands) or +32 (for Belgium).
Now you're ready to go abroad with your cellular phone!
Tips to reduce the costs in a foreign country
When you enter the border of another country your cellular phone will choose the strongest network at that moment. When the choice of networks is set to "automatic" your cellular phone will automatically choose the strongest network at that moment, when another network is stronger at another moment your cellular phone will automatically choose this network. However, it's not an obligation to use the network that your cellular phone chooses. You can manual select the network you want at the menu of your cellular phone. You can find information about this in the manual of your cellular phone.
When you're going to choose a network, you can choose this by examining the tariffs you looked up. You have to search for the cheapest network at the service (calling, sending a SMS etc) you want to use.
Sending a SMS in a foreign country
When you want to send a SMS in a foreign country you have to knwo that you pay the tariff of the country you're in and the costs of a SMS in the native country. When a SMS costs € 0,21 in your native country and the costs for a SMS in a foreign country are € 0,48, you will pay € 0,69 for one SMS! Besides this the right SMS exchange number has to be tuned in. You can find more information about SMS exchange numbers at the SMS Exchange numbers page.
Inactivate receiving MMS messages
When your cellular phone is compatible with MMS it's wise to inactivate the function to receive MMS messages. This is an option in your cellular phone. You can indicate that you only want to receive MMS messages at your home network. When you choose this option you will not receive a MMS at another network. Basically it's not free to receive a MMS when you're abroad (this can deviate with some providers).
Receiving calls is cheaper then calling yourself
In most cases it's cheaper to receive calls then to call yourself when your in a foreign country. You can make an agreement with the person you want to call, for example to call at a certain or to ring their phone once so they will call you back. This will save you about 30% of all costs. The person you want to talk to only pays the normal tariff to call to a cellular phone (until the border). You will pay the costs from the border to your cellular phone.
Cell Broadcast Service in a foreign country
Some foreign networks offer Cell Broadcast Service (Information service). It's a;ways free to receive these messages or information. Some networks offer really nice services by Cell Broadcast Service. You can find more information about Cell Broadcast Service at the Cell Broadcast Service page
