Virgin Mobile and Roaming (EE, Vodafone or O2)

[keithjd]

Does anybody actually know what is going on with Virgin Mobile and EU Roaming costs. They are currently an MVNO of EE, as I understand it they are moving to Vodafone later this year and are merging with Telefonica (O2). Vodafone just announced roaming charges for new customers and upgraded ones yesterday, where does Virgin Media sit in all of this.

[enlli]

Virgin set their own roaming charges independent of what carrier they use.

What they will do in the future will be kept under wraps, so no way of knowing. After all both EE and Vodafone launched these charges after saying they had no plans just weeks before.

[japitts]

Whilst an MVNO is wholly reliant on their host network for radio network coverage, their commercial offering can be entirely separate.

Take a look at the number of EE MVNO's who market themselves as "using EE" but are either oblivious to or ignorant of, not offering VoLTE (4G-calling) or VoWiFi (WiFI-calling).

That particular situation is changing now with 3G-switchoff being on the distant horizon, but it should illustrate the point.

[enlli]

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@japitts wrote:

Whilst an MVNO is wholly reliant on their host network for radio network coverage, their commercial offering can be entirely separate.

Take a look at the number of EE MVNO's who market themselves as "using EE" but are either oblivious to or ignorant of, not offering VoLTE (4G-calling) or VoWiFi (WiFI-calling).

That particular situation is changing now with 3G-switchoff being on the distant horizon, but it should illustrate the point.

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Interesting that BT owned PlusNet does not yet offer these things but EE MNVO 1p Mobile does. VoLTE, Wi-Fi Calling and 5G are all available now 

[BenMcr]

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@enlli wrote:

Virgin set their own roaming charges independent of what carrier they use.

What they will do in the future will be kept under wraps, so no way of knowing. After all both EE and Vodafone launched these charges after saying they had no plans just weeks before.

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Also it's worth pointing out that any MVNO agreement is for the UK only as far as I understand it.

So in addition to the difference in costs, just because Virgin Mobile use EE or Vodafone for the radio network here, doesn't mean that they use the same roaming agreement with networks outside the UK.

[keithjd]

Thank you. I actually used to work in Telecoms and I am aware of things called interconnect agreements too. Some official statement from Virgin Mobile would be really useful!

[Steven_L · Accepted solution]

Hey @keithjd,

Welcome back to the community and thanks for taking the time to post on our forums.

We haven't been advised of any changes to our roaming policies in the EU, I have looked into further with a few team members and we cannot find anything about the current policies changing, I'm not saying that they wont change but at the moment, we don't have any further information.

All of our current roaming information can be found here.  

Regards,

Steven_L

[keithjd]

Thanks for the reply! It's just that some European operators (e.g. A1 in Austria) have also started to charge roaming fees to their customers when they visit the UK. A1 Austria also happens to be a Virgin Mobile roaming partner. I guess at the moment people need to set roaming limits and don't ignore those network messages.