Truphone debuts 66-country flat rate roaming deal

Data plans of up to half a terabyte are on offer from Truphone, the mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) which targets businesses with lots of globe-trotting execs. Voice and data prices on the new Truphone tariffs are the same regardless of which of 66 countries you are in. They call this “Truphone World” and builds on the …

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this an article or an advert?

[frank ly]

"... with 12GB of data costing just shy of £1,000 ..."

I'd be happy to charge a roving business person half that rate, and provide a meal and a bottle of wine while they surfed the net using my WiFi. Do I put an advert in my local paper?

[Roland6]

Re: "... with 12GB of data costing just shy of £1,000 ..."

Expressed like that, it does seem expensive, but their pre-paid consumer rate for UK data is 0.10 GBP per MB. Which compares well with the major UK operators out of plan data charges. Mind you it does make my Three 15GB for 15GBP look too good to be true...

Also you do touch on an interesting point, namely it has gone very quiet about making your home WiFi a public hotspot, but then perhaps BT is slowly but surely taking over this market.

[ElNumbre]

Consider your Country List

This product is great, provided the execs stay in the Westernized Countries of the G20 and old Europe. Stray south of the Equator and/or head east from about Italy and the competitiveness rapidly falls away (excluding Australia). We do a lot of business in the Middle East and Africa where monopolies and duopolies, usually under the control of the dear leader mean that you're still knackered for international roaming unless you buy in-country sims.

N.b, El Reg really should have a product placement icon for articles like this.

[eurobloke]

Re: Consider your Country List

Agree on the advertorial business, I personally don't mind advertorials in on-line news, provided that it is clear that it is an advertorial, even if it is a black bar above the text stating that this a paid article.

[Anonymous Coward]

Eh?

> the EU is moving towards removing roaming charges altogether, but that only covers 28 countries and comes into effect in December 2015.

Only 28 countries (accounting for 20% of the World's GDP)?

Good enough for me, especially as I often am in four of those countries in the same day.

[James 51]

Can't come soon enough. Next thing will be being able to call other countries in the EU without being charged an enormous price for it.

[Mattp]

what about skype for business?

A while ago I got a company onto skype for business for their roaming execs. Seemed a bit cheaper with approx $20 all you can talk to groups of countries.

And skype call quality is pretty good, even over bad connections. I used it in Kenya recently in a hotel way up north, and the quality was fine. Which surprised me, because it took ages for a just an ordinary webpage to load on the same connection. Something about their P2P design and the compression used I believe.

[Roland6]

Re: what about skype for business?

And what SIMs did you use for connectivity outside of a WiFi hotspot?

[Mattp]

Re: what about skype for business?

True Roland, I did kindof miss that point as I was not really paying attention, but if you have skype for business with a dedicated virtual number, then all you need is a local sim card with a data tariff. And your "client facing" number wont change.

PS cant wait for more Wimax deployments.( 5km range for access points - thats a gamechanger)

[Roland6]

Re: what about skype for business?

@Mattb - did you go back to your client and reviewed how things were going sometime later? Also was your visit and hence usage in Kenya - business or personal?

I suspect that you will find that Skype actually made little impact on their total mobile bill, also there is probably still a significant amount of mobile costs being claimed on expenses and hence largely invisible. Why? because whilst Skype seems to be a good tool, for many business travellers, it's usage (like getting hold of a local SIM card) involves hassle, because it is something else to think about - plus it's a company mobile - the company is paying not me!.