Roaming in Poland - what should you know about it? Asia

People from Asia are more and more often travelling to Europe. Not only because of making new and more profitable business deals. Europe has endless attractions, including that popular mainly by Asians (like Żelazowa Wola for Japanese people). Travelling to such far away mainland makes difficult for them to contact with their families. This article will include some information about possibility of using international roaming in Poland when having a phone in Asian mobile operator and price of making phone calls from Europe and using the Internet.

Japan to Poland

Poland from year to year is being commonly visited by Japanese tourists, when they are doing a trip to Warsaw, Cracow and Żelazowa Wola - the birthplace of famous Polish composer Frederic Chopin. We’ve found an information about two mobile providers - NTT DoCoMo and Softbank Mobile offering roaming outside Japan. The first one has in their offer “Kaigai 1day Pake”, which makes possible for user to have an Internet connection during the trip. But the speed of using data is very low - the data rate will be 16 kbps if you use 30mb of data roaming. “Kaigai 1day Pake” costs 980¥ per day (about 9$), which for such parameters is quite expensive.

Softbank Mobile offers “S! Basic Pack” which Japanese tourist can buy through flat rate. The data rate is much faster because of supporting 3G Internet connection (up to 10mb/s) and user has possibility to send MMS (International S!Mail). However, “S! Basic Pack” is way more expensive than “Kaigai 1day Pake”. Using 25mb of data will cost the customer 1,980¥ (about 18$) per day. Exceeding the limit will raise the flat rate to 2,980¥ (27$) per day. Don’t forget that prices is only for using the Internet. We haven’t found any information if the amount includes making voice calls and sending text messages. That’s probably why MiFi routers are very popular in Japan.

Singapore to Poland

Maybe it’s not a very big country, but it could be a very interesting place for Polish businessmen! So if you’ll have to represent your Singaporean company in Poland, remember to check your roaming prices. It could be quite expensive. Singtel offers 10$ per 100 mb of data used in Poland. It’s still limited data storage, but sounds better than Japanese roaming packets (honestly - still expensive, because it’s 50$ for 500 mb).

China to Poland

There are two GSM operators in China - China Mobile and China Unicom. The second company has only put the information that since 2009 the operator was granted a WCDMA license, which made possibility to make international roaming. China Mobile (Hongkong) offers tariff for two Polish local operators - Orange and T-Mobile and Thuraya Satellite roaming (the last one excludes connecting the Internet). 1 mb of data costs in Orange 215 HK$ (about 28 USD), in T-Mobile 92 HK$ (11,80 USD). Even if second option is much cheaper, surfing the net is still very expensive.



 

Other Asian countries to Poland

People from other Asian countries also has to check international roaming range. In Indonesian XL Axiata, Poland is excluded from their roam range. Etisalat from United Arab Emirates offers 100 mb data roaming for 35 dirhams per day (about 10$). We also found information about Israeli Cellcom, where 1 mb of data transferred in Poland costs 10$.

Conclusion

The situation of international roaming for Asian tourists coming to Poland is quite complicated. Not every country has possibility to roam calls and data in this country, prices of having the Internet connection are different and very high, the quality of some offers are not well. We suggest to forget problems about international roaming and rent Polish WiFi router during your trip to Poland. You’ll have much more and you’ll save much money, which could be useful for completely enjoying our country.