Few weeks back I got an SMS from Base, my mobile provider. Just as a background, Base is a subsidiary company of E-Plus, one of four main providers in Germany. Now, I usually do not write products or service reviews, except it is explicitly tied to SharePoint, Microsoft and similar topics. And, after all, this is not a service review or doing any marketing for any mobile provider. But the SMS I got was worth of writing a couple of lines.

I travel a lot. Lot of people do. And most annoying thing is that, if I stay in any country for a couple of days or weeks, I need an affordable way to make calls or access internet. This usually means buying a prepaid card including various flat options, to avoid generating high costs while roaming. This also means, that I am not reachable via my private number while I am outside Germany (carrying two phones around are already pain in the ass, I don’t even want to think about carrying the third one).

To get back to the SMS from the beginning of the story, it included an info about the new offering from my provider. It is called EU Reise Flat (translated: EU travel flat). For 3 EUR per month (around $4), I can use now all of my flat options in European Union while roaming, without generating any additional costs. I used it during my last couple of trips and it’s simply great!

I am writing this because I want to spread a word and because I hope we will see more of it coming. I see that some providers like Vodafone are offering similar options but they cost way too much for now but not as much as roaming itself can cost. But, as we experienced with flat options, I believe that prices in this segment will drop. To conclude, I strongly believe that concepts like roaming should be a matter of past and I am really glad to see things here moving forward.​