ACTIVITIES :: Roaming :: What is international roaming?

What is international roaming?

When you travel to a foreign country, your mobile phone keeps working: you are roaming. You can make & receive mobile phone calls, write text messages (SMS) or surf the internet and download content.

Your calls, SMS and other data services are operated by a foreign network because your home provider does not normally operate in that country. For providing this service, the foreign network operator charges your home operator and your home operator passes this additional cost on to you.

Voice Roaming

When you make or receive a call while abroad you are using voice roaming.

Making a roaming voice call	Receiving a roaming voice call
You dial a mobile phone number. Your host operator receives your call.	A friend dials your mobile phone number.
Seeing an international number, it transfers the call via 'international transit' to your friend's home operator.	Your friend's operator routes the call to your home operator (which may or may not be the same as yours).
Your friend's home operator transfers the call to your friend. The connection is established.	Your home operator knows that you are currently roaming through a host operator in a foreign country, so it transfers the call to the host operator via 'international transit'.
	The host operator receives the call and transfers it to you. The connection is established.

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SMS roaming

When you send or receive an SMS while abroad you are an SMS roamer.

Sending a text message (SMS)	Receiving a text message (SMS)
You send an SMS to a friend while abroad.	A friend sends you an SMS while you are abroad.
The host operator transfers the SMS to your home operator.	Your friend's operator transfers the SMS to your home operator.
Your home operator transfers the SMS to your friend's operator.	Your home operator transfers the SMS to your host operator.

When you send an SMS while abroad, your operator will charge you a higher fee than the normal cost of an SMS. This fee includes additional costs for using the visiting network and transferring the SMS back to the home network. Operators do not charge for receiving an SMS abroad.

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Data Roaming

You can also use various data services while abroad: sending & receiving multimedia messages, reading & sending emails, using the internet via your handset or even connecting your laptop to the internet via a data card.

Sending multimedia message	Receiving multimedia message
The MMS is sent by the host operator via international transit.	The MMS is sent by your friend's operator to your home operator.
The international transit transfers the MMS to your home operator.	Your home operator transfers the MMS by international transit.
The home operator transfers the MMS to your friend's operator.	The international transit system transfers the MMS to your host operator.

Connecting to the internet while abroad

Your host operator transfers your data, via international transit, to your home operator.

Your home operator connects you to the internet, your e-mail and other services.

The price of a mobile data service is very often based on the volume of the data, which is measured either in kilobytes (KB) or megabytes (MB). An email is normally between 1 and 50KB; a page of your favourite online newspaper can be 100KB or more. To download a song you would have to transfer 2 to 5MBs of data. Your operator will charge you a price that also includes the fee that the visited network charges the home operator to provide the service.

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