IF YOU HAVE A EUROPEAN mobile phone account and you plan to travel in the European Union this summer while ringing around, using your mobile phone just got cheaper. With O2-Ireland, calling from any EU country back into Ireland costs no more than 59c per minute. And if someone calls you on your European mobile phone, it costs you just 29c per minute. However, you can beat both of those rates by using Truphone on your mobile phone, either with a 3G data connection or with a free wifi connection nearby. Sending an SMS text message from your European mobile phone costs 29c. It costs half that when using Truphone to send SMS text messages.
Important: Although the European mobile phone networks tell you "the rates for making and receiving a call in any EU country are the same regardless of what network you're on and this means there's no need to go through complicated phone menu selections to choose a different network," that's not true for data services. You need to use the preferred network provider if you expect to get the best roaming rates for data. From personal experience, you can easily pay more for mobile data roaming than you will pay for overnight accommodation in major European cities.
Sent mail2blog using O2-GPRS from the streets of Cahir, County Tipperary, Ireland using the Nokia E90 at left.
