Roaming in Europe - the Internet and talk, a little bit of practice

In September, I went on vacation in Europe (Baltic States, Scandinavia), because, of course, the question of communication arose - voice and data. I will not enumerate the list of tariffs and options that I considered - they did it very well before me . Better to write a little about the practical side of things.
I usually go with two phones (the main communicator and the standby regular phone), so it was not necessary to take one universal tariff.


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What was chosen

For incoming calls (to the phone), I stopped at the option Zero without Borders from MTS (this allowed me not to change the number or set up call forwarding, MTS is my main operator). The declared price of the service is 19 rubles per day , for them you get free incoming calls within the first ten minutes of the conversation. Restrictions on the number of conversations per day, I did not find, so, in theory, it is unlimited pieces. The service can be activated for MTS-Bonus points - 750 points for 10 days , so, in fact, it cost me free (I have several thousand of these points, did not know where to spend them).
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And in the communicator for outgoing and Internet I bought a megaphone SIM card with the “ Around the World ” tariff (incoming / outgoing in Europe at 6 rubles per minute , the Internet - at 7 rubles per megabyte , with no subscription fee). I used the Internet only if necessary (not urgent, just need :)), because the unlimited options of the same MTS decided not to look, I thought that I wouldn’t be chosen for ten megabytes per day.

Why not use local operators? I spent two or three days in different countries, this is not the time for which it makes sense to acquire a local SIM card. If I had spent all 20 days in one country - then yes, it would make sense to attend to it, and so - I doubt that there would be a saving.

Why did not use tourist sim cards? As the only voice sim card, perhaps, he would have taken (free incoming, outgoing calls for 9 rubles), but for the Internet at the price of a megabyte at 20 rubles - no, really. And in general, tourist sim cards now look pale in the light of new tariff options for roaming, introduced in the last six months or a year by the big three. At least in Europe.

It was all theory. And now the practice is how much the stated prices correspond to reality, are there any pitfalls. Look detail.

MTS:

Roaming Incoming SMS	164 fact	0
Roaming Inbound connection.	129 minute	7.5424
Roaming Home MR. Inbound connection	1 minute	0
Roaming Home MR. Outgoing call: mobile	1 minute	1,0169
Roaming MTS zone. Inbound connection	2 minutes	15.0847
Roaming Outgoing sms	1 fact	16,1017

7.50 (well, 8.90 - at MTS, the cost without VAT is specified in the details) I spent only when I did not keep up with the duration of the call. And so in all countries in the networks of different operators, the declared (zero) cost of incoming ones was observed. The only SMS for 20 rubles on this background looks terribly expensive (I usually do not use them, but it took to send). Well, the incoming call in St. Petersburg - I did not activate the service “Everywhere as at home”, because it turned out more expensive than it could be.

Megaphone (Internet only):

	MB
GPRS / HSDPA Internet	7.72	53.97 rub.
International roaming, VAS (Mobile Internet, Tele2 Doo (Croatia))	2.93	150.00 rub.
International roaming, VAS (Mobile Internet, Elisa Corporation)	33.4	233.80 rub.
Communication services outside the home region, VAS (Mobile Internet, North-West Branch of MegaFon OJSC)	5.27	36.91 rub.
International roaming, VAS (Mobile Internet, OMNITEL)	7.81	54.68 rub.
International roaming, VAS (Mobile Internet, UAB Bite Lietuva)	42.77	299.40 rub.
International roaming, VAS (Mobile Internet, Telia Mobile AB)	12.40	86.82 rub.
Communication services outside the home region, VAS (Mobile Internet, Central Branch of MegaFon OJSC)	.97	6.84 rub.
International roaming, VAS (Mobile Internet, TeliaSonera Mobile Networks AB Denmark)	19.63	137.39 rub.
International Roaming, VAS (Mobile Internet, Estonian Mobile Telephone Company Ltd)	15.14	105.96 rub.

And here, too, almost everything is correct, everywhere the claimed 7 rubles per megabyte are available - in the home region, in Russia, and abroad. Only here attracts the attention of the second line - Tele2 Doo (Croatia), 3 megabytes for 150 rubles.
I was not in Croatia, I was in Latvia at that time. It’s good that I noticed the money’s withdrawal relatively quickly - Megafon did the right thing, connected the online balance automatically, in the notification area of ​​the android communicator the actual balance always glowed and the look dropped there quite often. After that, I switched to the manual selection of the network and then chose the roaming operator with my hands so that the phone would communicate only with it, without twitching with the machine gun on others. I am too lazy to swear about the return of 150 rubles, because I simply took note that this happens (but in general, in the list of operators on the Megaphone website, Tele2 is marked as supporting seven-traffic traffic).

Otherwise, there were no special problems, rounding to 100 kilobytes happens once an hour, so you can easily keep ICQ in the background and not be afraid that each packet / session will be rounded.
There were no problems with voice calls either. The “Callback” service was in effect, if I called someone, the call was interrupted and the switch automatically called back to both of us, and then connected - as a result, both subscribers received an incoming call, I paid for it 6 rubles per minute, the interlocutor - according to their tariffs .

Conclusion

In spite of the problem with Tele2, the prices for traffic and voice suited me perfectly, if you preoccupied with tariffs in advance, you can have internet and communication anywhere for quite reasonable money. Roaming prices are falling and lines like " internet.mts.ru Ukraine: MTS UKR gprs 938Kb 432,000006 " are becoming less detailed (it was 2009, if my memory serves me, it was necessary to urgently download a driver for a modem, otherwise it wouldn't work with local simka on the Internet go out :)).

According to the results, I spent about 1000 rubles for traffic, 9 rubles for 2.5 hours of incoming calls, 6 rubles for one outgoing call and 20 rubles for outgoing SMS (one piece).