Pros and Cons of Using International Roaming Services

By carrying a mobile phone, it has become easier to communicate with others during your international trips. The rising percentage of international flyers has increased the demand of using telecom solutions that makes it possible to communicate with people back in your home country.

A well-known solution is to take international roaming services that allow travellers to receive and make calls during their travel. Many travellers have used these services in their international trips but have observed certain pros and cons. Both the pros and cons are mentioned for your convenience to help you in making the right decision. Some advantages of using global roaming services are:

1. Use your local mobile number during your trip
2. No requirement to activate or deactivate the service
3. Share latest social updates by using data services
4. Use prepaid or postpaid connection as per your convenience
5. Destination network is selected automatically

However, there are few disadvantages of using global roaming services. Some of the points are listed below:

1. Buy a new handset if your current handset is not compatible with the destination network
2. Manually select the network to stay on a single network
3. No facility to check and monitor the usage online
4. No caller id facility
5. No option to check your SIM card history
6. Limited access to customer care centre
7. Incoming calls are also chargeable

Apart from the above demerits, there are huge costs involved in international roaming. The logic is quite simple. The destination network sends signal to home network and then receives back the signal again to destination network. The entire process incur huge on your local mobile number. Hence, it is great to use your local number during your international trip but you must be prepared to bear huge expenses.

If you think that you can stay away from your local mobile number for few days, you can choose an alternative to roaming. There are cost-effective international SIM cards available that ensures good network connectivity.

In short, these SIM cards are local number of destination country that is available before your departure. Once you reach at the destination, you can turn your handset on and start using it. In addition, the telecom service providers also have customer care centre to provide you assistance, anytime and anywhere.

While you are busy in planning for your international trip, you must make an arrangement in advance so that you can receive pre-activated SIM cards for your overseas trip.