Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2007/08/25/awayphone_review/

AwayPhone aims to slash mobile roaming costs

Are you local?

By John Leyden

Posted in Networks, 25th August 2007 07:02 GMT

Review Mobile phone roaming charges have long been a big rip-off.

UK operator AwayPhone aims to change that for business travellers, with a service that makes mobile roaming much, much cheaper. Subscribers get a SIM card which routes calls over the internet, whenever possible, and a local phone number in foreign countries. At the same time users can keep their regular mobile number.

As someone who works for a UK firm but lives in Spain, I was intrigued with the service. AwayPhone works best when you are travelling away from your home mobile network, and (according to our experience at least) in bigger cities where coverage is good. I live in the countryside 200km west of Madrid and my usage pattern, with a lot of calls to and from the UK and Spain and the majority of time abroad, is unusual.

AwayPhone is geared more towards business travellers who make short trips abroad. It also allows people to save money when they call internationally from their mobiles to a wide range of destinations across the world.

The service has been compared, rather inaccurately, to Skype. Unlike Skype, AwayPhone does not rely on an internet connection or Wi-Fi network to work. Skype may be a cheaper option for calling fixed line numbers, but AwayPhone scores because you don't have to have device connected to the internet at the time of a call. This is something that's unlikely to be available on a cab ride from the airport, for example.

Savings of up to 90 per cent on calls with AwayPhone are quoted for some destinations, but we found 70-80 per cent to be a more realistic figure. This is a massive saving, but... inter-country calls are still treble the price of using a local SIM, even with the savings that AwayPhone offers.

But in my experience, the service is lot cheaper than having two SIM cards for each country and two phones. And there is added convenience of having just the one handset to carry around.

Customers pay £25 for a new SIM card, and a monthly fee of £6. The service works only on certain tri-band GSM handsets (list here) that feature ring-back and which are unlocked. In our case we were supplied with a Motorola V220 at a cost of £40.

When users are abroad they simply type in an activation code to divert calls from their regular mobile number to their AwayPhone.

Users should remember to cancel the activation when they return home to avoid unnecessary charges. AwayPhone works best as a rider to existing mobile contracts. Users should use their own phone at home to take advantage of the inclusive text and call bundles that most operators provide.

AwayPhone uses ring back for outgoing calls. Users make a call, which is dropped, before users are rung back. So, after you place a call the phone rings and you're told to hold the line by a recorded message before the other person answers and the call connects.

The process feels a bit odd at first, but it's not too hard to get used to.

Hanging on the telephone

AwayPhone's coverage is far from perfect - although it's never experienced the kind of network unavailability problems that bedeviled Skype last week. Call quality is generally worse than a standard mobile connection, and this sometimes causes problems with a conversation. The network is unable occasionally to place calls, although such "outages" rarely last long. Also, I have encountered crosstalk a couple of times, in my four months with the service.

I suspect a lot of my problems come from living in an area with relatively poor mobile coverage. I think the service would work a lot better for users who commute\ between, London and Madrid, say, or Brussels.

The service also lacks one important ingredient: caller line identification. Users are unable to see who is calling them or even which country the call comes from. People you call locally don't see your local number. Currently, incoming calls show up as "unknown", "private", or occasionally from a gateway number that's not the one actually calling you. AwayPhone is working on providing Caller Line Identification (CLI).

This lack of CLI doesn't interfere with sending text messages, however, which show up as numbers on your home network assigned to AwayPhone. Recipients can reply to these messages at local rates.

Despite these niggles, I plan to stick with AwayPhone - I liked the service enough to sign on as a paid user when my two-month trial expired.

AwayPhone is a pioneer in reducing Europe's outrageous mobile roaming prices. In April this year, European Commissioners passed a ruling capping roaming tariffs within the EU. But roaming prices in the world remain high. ®

Benefits

Shortcomings: