From today's Scripting News: "I'm still getting billed for some items from my Europe trip in April. The wonderful cell phone I rented, for one week, cost (sit down) $472.53. Holy shit. Now some of that has to be the terrible exchange rate from dollars to euros. And some of it is a total ripoff. Oy. I better get a phone that works in Europe. Andrew has one. He says T-Mobile is the way to go."

Christoph Jaggi explains...

Hi Dave,

just a quick explanation of your mobile phone bill: You got a Dutch
phone number, which means that for all calls you made and received
outside of the Netherlands you were charged roaming fees. These easily
add up to 1 Euro per minute.The only way to avoid these roaming charges
is to have a phone number for every country you are travelling in,
which is not very practical either. Going with a international mobile
operator does not spare you from the roaming charges, as you will have
a phone number with a country code. Every call made or received outside
the area of your HLR (Home Location Register) goes through a VLR
(Visitor Location Registor) and that where the roaming charges come in.
The fact that T-Mobile is present outside its home country (Germany)
doesn' mean that they will not charge you roaming fees when using
another  network than the network your number is assigned to. The same
is true for companies such as Vodafone, Orange, etc.

The high roaming charges are under investigation because of  the high
net margins made.

Hope this explains a little bit.

# Posted by Dave Winer on 6/19/04; 10:25:55 PM - --