Internaitonal roaming for prepaid

While it would definitely be very nice, I doubt that US prepaid operators will do it any time soon.

 

Adding international roaming in addition to the current Canada and Mexico, would definitely add value to the T-Mobile To Go service.

 

The T-Mobile companies in Europe, allow international roaming, just about everywhere. I don't know if it the result of an EU mandate, but if the other companies allow it, why not T-Mobile USA. As long as the customer has a sufficient balance, what's the issue?

 

Pre-paid and post-paid have different billing structures. Pre-paid needs to be in real-time, while post-paid can be done off-line. Maybe it's just not worth it for T-Mob USA to bother with international pre-paid roaming agreements, since the bulk of international travellers are probably post-pad anyway

I don't think theres any mandate in the EU requiring pre-paids to work in other countries. Actually, I've only been seeing pre-paids work outside the home country just recently. But anyway, the rates are expensive, and you're just better off buying a new pre-paid SIM in the country you're visiting.

 

My Russian prepaid works internationally and I had it since about 2004, but they go back another year or two for sure. Incidentally, that one is not real-time, like the UM & UM+ SIM cards I have.

Whether or not Russia is part of Europe is still debatable

 

Really? I'm not doubting you, just kind of suprised. What operator was it with? I have a pre-paid SIM from Estonia from 2004 and that only worked on it's native Estonian network (EMT) as far as I recall.

And how is your pre-paid card not billed in real-time? If you have, say, 10 minutes talk-time left on your card, you must be cut off at the end of the 10 minutes. The post-paid billing system can have a delay of at least 10 minutes, or in the case of roamers, even a few days. So if it's not billed in real-time, how does the network know to cut you off at the end of your talk-time?

 

Mine is with MTS. I don't know how much they will let me go into the negative and what happens if I do, but the fact is that it's not real-time. On the other hand, in order to buy a SIM in Russia (at least at that time) I needed to show them my passport, so they know who to go after in case the account goes delinquent. It's not real-time even on the native network, although there it updates much faster. I also remember one of the other carriers (Beeline, I think) making a big deal in advertising of having a real-time billing plan. My sister has run hers into negative a few times in Russia, so it must not be cutting off. when it should either.

Don't know if anybody ever tried to con MTS for some $$ and lived to tell the story

BTW, to turn the international roaming on you have to go in person to the MTS office and show them your passport again.

 

Interesting. I guess some operators then run their pre-paid accounts on a file-based (ie: post-paid) billing system rather than an event-based (ie: real-time) system. I guess then they just run the risk of people going into minus on their accounts. In their own systems (ex. MTC) they can set the files to process quickly (ie: every 5 minutes or so), so they'll minimize the amount people can go minus. But allowing pre-paid customers to roam abroad is very risky, becasue MTC won't get the Call Data Records until whenever the roaming network decides to send them. And that can be alot more than 5-10 minutes. Unless MTC would only make roaming areements with other operators on the condition they get files within, say 15 minutes delay and accept that risk.

And I'm not sure why BeeLine would advertise to their subscribers a real-time billing system. I think I'd rather go with the operator like MTC who lets me go into the negative

Ah, maybe. I didn't really bother with it, since I usually just get a new pre-paid SIM when I go to another country. It's usually cheaper and easier.

 

I haven't heard of such a mandate either, but then again it does sound like something the EU would do so I suppose it's possible. However, I think it's far more likely that the networks themselves want pre-pay customers to use their handsets abroad given the amount of travel that takes place within Europe. In 2003 Europe accounted for 57.8% of all tourists, and six of the top ten tourist destinations were European countries. Much of that tourism no doubt comes from within Europe itself, so to not allow pre-pay roaming would just be insane.

European pre-paid handsets have worked abroad for years. Perhaps some networks in some countries have been a bit slow though? There are some pre-paid MVNOs I know of that don't allow international roaming, but most networks should.

As for the cost, it can be expensive, but the EU has already mandated a price reduction, and might again if prices don't come down further. Networks will usually offer some sort of deal to make it cheaper abroad e.g. Vodafone Passport. The real cost is in using data abroad.

 

If they bill in real-time then activation is a non-issue

I never made a voice call when roaming, so I don't know how fast these charges get through — SMS can be delayed by 2-3 days.

A lot of people in Russia don't keep high balance in their accounts. In case of a delayed billing that puts you into negative you can't use your phone — so in order to restore service you have to use a payment system that applies credit directly to your account, as opposed to being able to do it from the phone. So with that Beeline plan you always know when you're in dire need of replenishing

I suppose they deemed the risk not high enough to bother with a real-time billing system — it's hard to tell what they were thinking.

 

Post-paid billing systems are usually more traditional, safer and easier to operate compared to real-time ones. So MTC probably just accepted the slight delay of the post-paid system. Altho since the majority of Russians have pre-paid cards, it may be a good idea for them to get a real-time billing system. But yea, who knows, hard to know what they are thinking. I have an old friend who works at MTC, maybe he knows (but he works in radio, so maybe not )

Speaking of Russia, I just read the mobile penetration there is over 100%, no doubt from all the pre-paid cards getting thrown around:

CNews: Cellular communications penetration level reaches 128% in Russia

...oh, also I know in Estonia and Ukraine you can buy pre-paid cards without any ID, but in Switzerland you must show ID. Not for going in debt with the operator, but to keep track of them for "national security" issues (I think abunch of Swiss pre-paid cards were found being used by terrorists internationally or something like that)

 

Hurrah! I hear Ms. Redding, the Commissioner in charge of telecommunications, is looking at data roaming too!

 

Well, if you find out why MTS decided to use a post-paid system for pre-paid billing, that'll be great!

I have a number of friends in Russia who have multiple SIMs. Some do it because they can get cheaper texting rates with one operator, but need the other for voice, some do it because their country house is in the roaming area for their main operator and so on. So I'm not surprised to see those high percentages.