Mobile Network Comparison

Since the start of July earlier this week, the cost of using your phone abroad when travelling in the EU has dropped significantly. As we first reported back in May last year, European Parliament has enforced EU–wide roaming rules including price caps for all networks operating within the European Union.

As a result the new price caps just kicked in on 1 July 2013 and mean that the price of making calls will drop by over 17%, while the amount you have two pay to receive calls when abroad has fallen by about 12%.

The new retail pricing means that you have to pay a maximum of €0.24 per minute for outgoing calls and €0.07 per minute for incoming calls. These prices are all excluding taxes so don’t forget to add on the price of VAT.

As for the price of sending SMS text messages, this too has dropped by over 10% falling from an ex. VAT price of €0.09 to the current price of just €0.08 each.

Perhaps most importantly for tourists planning trips abroad in the EU, data charges while roaming have also fallen significantly. Traditionally, it’s been very easy to be caught out and end up with phone bills even running into hundreds of pounds following a quick break to Europe.

Even though nowadays almost all smart phones come with data roaming disabled by default many people don’t understand the settings and quite frequently leave background data services running when they go on holiday. The result is that their phones are constantly uploading and downloading data without them realising and before 1 July 2012 there was no price cap on data roaming within the EU. It wasn’t uncommon for operators to charge several pounds for a single megabyte of transferred data me that it would cost several pounds just to send a photo by e-mail.

However, when the regulations first kicked in on in summer last year, the data price Was introduced at €0.70 per megabyte. While this is still incredibly expensive and many orders of magnitude more than you would pay the same amount of data in the UK, at least caps the amounts that you would have to pay if you do need to use the Internet whilst travelling in Europe.

The latest price decrease sees this amount fall significantly down to just €0.45 per megabyte of data used. This is a drop of over 35% and will certainly make checking your e-mail or catching up on news home a lot more affordable.

Another aspect of the EU regulations is the ability for consumers to choose which network they want to roam on when they enter a foreign country. We really welcome this move as it will only serve to encourage competition between the various mobile operators and hence drive down prices for users. The regulations also safeguard reasonable prices until at least the middle of 2017.

It’s also worth noting that these are absolute maximum price caps. There’s nothing to stop networks charging less than these amounts and we hope to see more and more mobile operators offering competitive rates for people holidaying abroad.

Overall, the European commission’s work which has been in progress for five years now has seen consumers benefit from massive retail price reductions over the last few years. In fact, many rates are set to halve since 2011 which can only be a good thing.

For full details of the coming price caps that have been introduced over the last two years the see the tables below:

Retail pricing (ex. VAT)

Wholesale pricing

Have you ever been caught out by unexpected mobile roaming bill after holidaying abroad? How much is your mobile network charge for roaming fees when in Europe? And have they adhered to these new European regulations or do they even charge slightly less?

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Exciting news over here at MNC Towers – we published our first ever mobile phone review last week and even though we’re biased, we definitely think it’s worth a look. Not content with reviewing every UK network we can hear about, we got our hands on a shiny new Lenovo A789 handset all the way from China and subjected to a battery of trials and tests.

For those of you who didn’t know, Lenovo have been making mobile phones as well as tablets and PCs for some years now and are one of the major manufacturers in China.

The Lenovo A789 is typical of a Chinese phone that’s not available directly on the UK market – much cheaper than the norm but packing an impressive specs list and a unique feature set including great ideas such as dual-SIM capability and a built-in FM transmitter.

In addition to this, it’s also easy to get hold of from eBay and Amazon without having to worry about all the hassle and delays of ordering from China, let along the risk of getting scamming or being hit by heft customs and import charges.

But how does it perform in day to day usage? Can it cope with the latest games and apps, how good is the camera and what about the battery like. Most of all, is it worth the money?

We used the phone every day for two weeks to find out what it’s actually like to own. Check out the review itself to read on and find out what we thought…

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Glastonbury, the world’s largest greenfield festival, will be the first to offer dedicated on-site 4G wireless data. With a capacity of about 200,000 people and a location miles away from the nearest major city, mobile internet access often slows to a crawl at Glasto. Usually there are only about 9,000 people in the village and not that many of them have 4G phones!

As a result, many large festivals like Glasto and other public events often bring extra cell towers to cope with the demand, but this year Michael Eavis is trying something different.

In a bit of a media, gimmick, EE is sponsoring a specially-modified vehicle that will drive around the festival site offering wifi access through a EE 4G connection. You won’t need to be an EE customer, just to have a wifi-enabled mobile device to take advantage of the free service. The 4G router will drive around the massive festival site beaming out its high-speed internet access.

There won’t be any issues with the wifi access point getting stuck in the infamous Glastonbury mud as it will be fitted onto a special pimped-out New Holland farm tractor capable of the worst that even Glasto has to offer. And festival-goers will be able to keep up to date with its location by following the EE Twitter feed.

Don’t think that thousands of stinky hippies will be chasing after the tractor though desperate to update their Facebook status – there will also be the usual “recharge” tents at the festival offering free power and internet access over the weekend.

This year the nine hundred acre Worthy Farm in the South West of England will play host to hundreds of international artists from all over the world and the gates open to those lucky enough to have grabbed a ticket today.

As ever, all eyes will be on the weather forecast over the coming days. Music-wise, the main headliners on the Pyramid stage will be The Rolling Stones, Mumford & Sons and (sigh) Arctic Monkeys.

However, smarter punters know better and will be cramming in one of the smaller areas to see better-respected acts such as Fuck Buttons, Eat Static and Gold Panda or up-and-coming bands including Jagwa-Ma and Suuns. And of course, the festival site becomes a huge city of art, performance, activism and fun with plenty else to see and do.

To help you keep track of everything you want to see, EE have also sponsored the offical Glastonbury 2013 smartphone app available for Android and iPhone. It even caters for those who are staying at home over the weekend as it has live streams of the BBC coverage of the festival’s main stages.

Are you going to Glasto this year? And if so, are you bringing a smartphone or are you deciding not to risk it and preferring to leaving it at home? Will you download the app and do you think anyone will bother to seek out the 4G tractor? Let us know!

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