Nowadays, having a mobile phone at our side is almost a necessity, whether to keep in touch with our family and friends or to be able to continue working or maintain contact with our colleagues, clients and employees even when we travel abroad. However, here we must understand a very important concept that will make us understand the way in which communications are established when we leave our country, and that is why we are going to spend a few minutes defining What is data roaming and why is it important?.
What is data roaming
We'll start by defining data roaming, something you may have heard of referring to as roaming .
Usually we are going to have a telephone company contracted in our country of origin, but if we leave it with some frequency, you will have verified that this does not mean that we are left without connection, that is, even when we go outside our country or the country. where we have contracted telephone services, we will continue to maintain both the telephone connection and the Internet connection.
Therefore, in a basic way, we could define data roaming as the possibility of continuing to use all contracted telephone services (calls, data and SMS messages) even if we are outside the field of action of our operator, a process that is carried out through connecting our device to the networks of other companies.
It should be noted that data roaming generally takes place when we leave one country and go to another, but there are cases in which the territories are so large that some companies do not cover them completely, so that data roaming can occur. data within the same country. This occurs in the United States, India and Russia, so if you have contracted services from companies from one of these three, it is important to know the limits, especially if you are going to have to move around the country frequently.
In short, for data roaming to be effective, there must be an agreement between the company we have hired and the company through which we are going to connect, and as a curiosity, I would like to tell you that, for example in Spain, there are also cases of roaming or data roaming, although it does not affect our bill, and this occurs when a certain company has its own telephone network but at the same time also has agreements with other companies so that its users can use their networks.
It is clear that data roaming is an important advantage, since otherwise we would have to hire the services of other telephone companies in the destination countries, but it also has a notable disadvantage, which is that, if we are not careful, we can We will find that the final bill of the month arrives larger than expected, since the contracted rates will not be valid, but we will be charged per megabyte and per minute of call, and all this at a price that is not exactly economical.
Furthermore, in many cases they will not only charge us, but they will also charge the person who receives or issues the call from the country of origin. That is, if I have contracted my rate in Spain, I travel to the United States and a relative from my country of origin calls me, they will charge both of us.
The farewell to data roaming in Europe
In most of the world there is a significant lack of control regarding the rates to apply in case of data roaming, but since 2007, the European Union decided to regulate this aspect in order to facilitate the free movement of citizens throughout all countries, so that a limit was established in terms of costs.
At the same time, a limit was also established through which only those who are abroad pay, avoiding the extra cost to those who are in the country of origin.
There is no doubt that these two regulations in Europe They represent significant savings and a fantastic advantage, but the truth is that the future is even better predicted on the continent, since the intention is eliminate roaming in Europe completely from June 2017, so that we can use our device with different companies without having to pay an extra cost, as long as we are within the countries of the European Union and of course the contract has also been established in any of them.
It should be noted that the first two companies to eliminate roaming in the European Union have been Vodafone in the case of Spain and Meteor in Ireland. There is a third company from the United Kingdom called Three, which has also done the same but only to certain destinations in the European Union.
Steps to activate and deactivate data roaming
But in the meantime it is possible that we do not want to have a scare with our bill and we decide eliminate roaming or data roaming on our device, in which case we will have to carry out a very simple configuration process whose steps we will detail below.
The first thing we have to do is enter the applications section and then we will go to Settings. Once inside we will stay at the top where you will see the access “More…”. We click on it and a new window will appear with different options from which we are going to choose "Mobile networks".
Here we only have to select or unselect the “Data roaming”, so that we can activate and deactivate this service.
However, we should not completely trust this type of configuration, and in order to be totally convinced that we will be able to use our device when we leave our country, the best option is to contact our operator directly to confirm if there will be any at our destination. some type of problem, in addition to the fact that it will also inform us about the rates, a very important fact that we must take into account to avoid the scares that we often get on our first trip due to ignorance.
This is basically all we need to know about data roaming and its importance, and it is clear that having this type of services is an important advantage, but above all we must worry about maintaining adequate control to avoid Let things get out of hand.
Industrial Engineering student and lover of writing and technology, for several years I have participated in various pages with the aim of always keeping myself informed of the latest trends and contributing my grain of sand in this immense dissemination network that we know as the Internet.
