Roaming, the new tariffs start from Wednesday. The cost for international roaming can be high for those who are on holiday outside Italy and surf the Internet for work or pleasure. It will help reduce it cutting roaming charges in the European Union (which entered into force on April 30) for voice, SMS and data traffic abroad, in order to consider the EU states as a single nation, which will take effect on Wednesday June 15, 2016. The problem will remain, instead, for other non-EU countries. And this too should give pause to the British citizens who will vote on Brexit on 23 June. Finally, from 15 June 2017, the definitive and total zeroing of all extra costs will start, both for calls and text messages and for Internet browsing.
A study of SosTariffe.it analyzed the cost trend of mobile Internet abroad according to three different usage profiles, choosing Europe and New York as a reference for its simulation, and concluded that the promotions developed by the various operators still allow for considerable savings, almost 99% in some cases. In practice therefore, Italian promotions beat EU legislation for the moment, waiting for June next year.
The simulation: how much you consume and spend on vacation
To carry out the analysis, three profiles were distinguished for Internet browsing, Light, Medium and High, by simulating consumption for a week spent abroad according to the following table.
Svideo treaming and audio streaming they are used a lot on vacation, when you have more free time, and are particularly "greedy" for MB of data; GPS maps programs are also widely used, to reach one's destination in a foreign country without difficulty, browsers for classic navigation on the Net and applications for video calls.
The only case in which it is convenient not to activate a specific promotion for roaming, according to the SosTariffe.it study, concerns those who connect very little ("light" profile) and are in Europe; in this case, the 14,5 euros calculated as the most advantageous promotion for the profile are higher than the average cost if the promo is not subscribed (8,3 euros). In all other cases, the analysis showed that it is cheaper to activate the roaming-specific mobile offer.
In fact, having a Medium consumption profile is enough to save an average of 37 euros, given that spending without promotions reaches 41,5 euros, with savings for those who subscribe to it of 65,01%; the lowest cost reaches 84,6 euros with intense use of the connection and a saving of 85,34%.
Non-EU countries, USA in the lead
The convenience is even more evident when it comes to non-European countries, for example in a popular destination like New York. Here it is not possible to enjoy the advantages linked to the application of the Eurotariff and other EU decisions relating to international roaming, and spending without promotion can become very high even if one limits oneself to listening to some music or surfing the Internet to check the reviews of a hotel or a restaurant.
Already a week of light navigation, as can be seen from the table, can cost 282,28 euros in the United States. In this case, the cheapest average promotion for those in New York amounts to 15,05 euros, with a saving of 94,67%. The percentage savings for those who activate the promo is even more significant with medium (98,94%) and high (99,55%) consumption, with spending even thousands of euros lower: the basic rates without promotion for these two ranges consumption on average amount to 1.415,97 euros and 3.379,85 euros respectively.
The EU and international roaming
For years, international roaming has been one of the highest costs faced by those who travel a lot for work or are abroad on holiday, and over the years the European Commission has decided on a series of measures aimed at decreasing both the expense for individual calls and connections and the possibility of real unexpected bloodletting at the end of the month (the "bill shock"). After the Eurotariff, in force since 2007, it was opted for a total abolition of roaming costs starting from 15 June 2017, but a transition phase already began on 30 April 2016 which led to a significant drop in prices.
How to save money by surfing from abroad: 4 tips
It is good to remember that even on vacation you can follow some tricks to spend less when you connect to the Internet abroad. Below are the top 4 tips on navigating abroad:
1) First of all, you can ask your operator about the possibility, usually foreseen, of establishing maximum spending thresholds, with relative notification if you are approaching them.
2) Secondly, the rule is to take advantage of the hotel's Wi-Fi as much as possible and the public one, much more widespread abroad than in Italy, from restaurants to cafés. There are many apps that can find the closest Wi-Fi hotspot to your location.
There are also particular options in the mobile apps to limit data traffic, for example by opting for a slightly lower quality of audio and video streaming.
3) Finally, before leaving, it is better to take a look at the options related to roaming on your smartphone: background updates of applications must be deactivated if you are not connected to a Wi-Fi network, as well as automatic uploads to a service cloud hosting of the many photos that will be taken.
Here is the link to view the internet offers instead, the offers for mobile Internet are more convenient: http://www.sostariffe.it/confronto-offerte-internet-mobile/.
