Daily Discussion Thread: Thu 17 Aug 2023
Daily Discussion Thread: Thu 17 Aug 2023
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I'm looking for the cheapest mobile plans with some roaming. I.e. if I go abroad and I get a verification code to my number. I want to get it. I don't care about the roaming data rates etc since I can just get a virtual SIM from abroad.
Currently I'm in vaya but they don't offer roaming
Any provider that offers roaming at your destination has free SMS receiving, so you don't need to buy roaming (just need to have it available).
That's not true any more. They now charge $10/day for roaming whether you use anything or not. It's getting very hard to get an actual pay-as-you-go plan any more. Everything had shifted to pre-paid monthly plans. Blame it on people not paying their bills or whatever, it's still annoying.
Can you please elaborate which carrier did it?
Telstra has almost completely switched to a pre-paid direct debit block model. It’s very difficult to get a pay-as-you-go plan unless it’s a business account with multiple services. The way it works is:
- Pre-pay some fixed amount per month
- Includes unlimited national calls and text messages within Australia
- Includes a certain amount of “fast” data in Australia, and unlimited data throttled to a lower speed after exceeding the “fast” data allowance
- Includes an allowance of international calls to selected countries
- Additional international calls or calls to other countries require pre-paying for blocks of calls
- International roaming costs $10/day for calls and text messages, charged daily
- International roaming data requires pre-paying for blocks of data
Telstra switched to this model in the last year. Optus switched to a similar model as well.
The reason was they were having huge problems with dishonoured direct debit transactions. They’d have to try and chase the people for the payment, then disconnect them if they still wouldn’t pay. There was a lot of cost involved.
Switching to a pre-paid direct debit model makes it simpler and cheaper for them. If the transaction is declined, they cut off service immediately, and it’s the customer’s responsibility to sort it out before service will be restored. It greatly reduces risk for them.
I understand why they switched to this model, but It frustrates me as someone who always paid their bill. You can’t just leave your phone on roaming in case you receive a text message, and you need to commit to a certain minimum amount at a time for international calls rather than just paying for what you use at the end of the month.
Okay. In the context of roaming, receiving SMSes are free. This applies to all carriers, and in most cases you'll be able to receive SMSes as long as your SIM card is able to register on the local networks.
Receiving/making calls, sending SMSes, and using data will incur charges - in case of prepaid, the actions (other than receiving SMSes) will simply fail if you don't have an active roaming paket.
That being said, on Telstra you could just disable your day pass and you'll still be able to receive SMSes, just not do anything else while overseas, which is what I did during my recent trip back home. Not sure about Optus/Vodafone as I don't use them.