How to activate ‘roaming’ to travel around the world

Roaming is the service offered by telephone companies to be able to continue to use the mobile when traveling abroad, that is, to be able to make calls, send messages, access the internet, etc. What telephone companies do is establish a series of agreements with foreign companies in order to continue using the network normally.

Whenever traveling from one country to another, it is common to receive a text message from the telephone company informing users that they are in roaming and reminding them of the usage policy reasonable.

This service is automatically activated on almost all phones when you arrive in another country, so you don’t have to worry about turning it on or off. What really needs to be looked at is data roaming, since you have to have it activated to be able to use the mobile.

The operators group the countries into three different ‘roaming’ zones, depending on where you travel you will be part of one zone or another and you will have or not a data roaming surcharge.

Zone 1: In the case of these countries the charge for ‘roaming’ is null, since it is regulated by the European Union (EU).

• Germany
• Austria
• Bulgaria
• Belgium
• Cyprus
• Croatia
• Czechia
• Denmark
• Slovenia
• Slovakia
• Spain
• Estonia
• Finland
• France
• Greece
• Hungary
• Ireland
• Italy
• latvia
• Lithuania
• Luxembourg
• malt
• Netherlands
• Poland
• Portugal
• Romania
• Sweden
• Liechtenstein
• Iceland
• Norway

Zone 2: In the countries and territories of this zone, the charge will depend on the operator with which the mobile rate is contracted, since it is not regulated by the EU and depends on the telephone company. These are some of the territories that can be part of this area, according to the telephone companies.

• Albanian
• Andorra
• Algeria
• Bosnia Herzegovina
• Bermuda
• Canada
• United States (in some cases)
• Guernsey
• Isle of Man
• Faroe Islands
• Jersey
• Kosovo
• Macedonia
• Morocco
• Monaco
• Montenegrin
• Puerto Rico
• San Marino
• Swiss
• Tunisia
• Turkey

Zone 3: Countries that are neither in zone 1 nor in zone 2 belong to this zone. To find out the surcharge in these zones, you must call the telephone company.

How to activate ‘roaming’

• Open the ‘Settings’ on the mobile phone
• Access the ‘SIM card and mobile data’ tab
• If the phone has a dual SIM card, choose the one on which you want to activate ‘roaming’
• Click on the ‘SIM information and settings’ section
• Within this tab, look for the ‘Network settings’ section
• Click on ‘Data roaming’ and, finally, when receiving the question to confirm the activation, accept

In which countries roaming is not necessary

In 2017, the European Union reached an agreement to eliminate the ‘roaming‘, thus forcing the telephone companies to stop charging the abusive prices they charged each customer every time they left their country. The countries that are part of this agreement are the 27 members of the EU in addition to Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein.

One very important thing to keep in mind is that neither Andorra nor Switzerland are included in the free list of ‘roaming’. With regard to the United Kingdom, many doubts have arisen since the country’s exit from the community bloc came into force: for the time being, all companies have decided to maintain the same conditions of ‘roaming’ that they had previously when traveling to the United Kingdom, with the exception of Orange and Jazztel, who decided that the country would no longer be part of their free zone 1.

The free ‘roaming’ measure approved by the European Parliament will be in operation for another ten years, until 2032, so for the time being mobile services can continue to be used free anywhere in the European Union.

In any case, it is always better to make sure and talk to the telephone company itself so that it is itself the one that indicates which countries they have agreements with and thus avoid any scare when reviewing the bill.

What happens with ‘roaming’ if you travel outside the EU?

There are companies that have decided go beyond covering zone 1 and they have wanted to apply this gratuity to ‘roaming’ in other countries outside the community bloc, such as the United States. So if you are part of any of these companies, whether contract or prepaid, it means that all customers will have the advantage of being able to talk and navigate at the same price as in Spain both within the European Union and associated countries as well as in the United States. Joined. Yes indeed, it is always necessary to have ‘roaming’ and mobile enabled data roaming.

Vodafone complies with this policyso the customers of this company are in luck, since it includes roaming in the United States in all its rates, thus allowing travel throughout the United States at no additional cost; in these cases, only the price set at the usual rate will be paid.

Another company that has recently joined this initiative is Grupo MásMóvil, which has confirmed that it will extend this advantage to all its operators, including Yoigo and Pepephone.