I’ve recently been on an overseas trip, and it seems without fail that the concept of mobile roaming charges causes confusion and headaches for me (or perhaps more specifically my travelling companions). This is a short post to crystallise what I’ve re-learnt and to have something to refer to

There are a few related concepts at play:

  • Roaming - whether you can do anything (make calls, send messages, emergency calls, access the internet) with your phone using cellular data. At present this is something I turn on in the plan settings of my mobile provider, via their web portal.
  • Data roaming - whether you can use the internet related component of your cellular data overseas i.e. web pages, blue imessage messages, texts through messenger. This is usually a setting tied to a SIM in your phones settings (confusingly, this is just called “roaming” on my android phone)
  • Mobile data - whether you can use the internet related component of your cellular data at all - overseas or locally.

So, you’d think having roaming and data roaming and mobile data enabled (and airplane mode disabled) would be enough to be able to make or recieve calls overseas. Depending on your mobile provider that might be right. But you may also have to purchase additional credit for “premium services” such as international calls, if it’s not covered in your base plan - which honestly surprises me, I’d expect a phone provider to greedily just gobble up my funds after I’d first enabled roaming.

Fortunately, we didn’t actually need the phones for this trip, they were a “just-in-case” only, but hopefully this will be a useful reminder to get this right for next time.