A friend of ours has just said that they will now pay to receive mobile calls from French mobile and fixed line numbers and including UK mobile number (when the call call originates in the EU). As I can’t talk to them i don’t know which network or the terms.
However I guess this does not hold good when both caller and receiver are using WhatsApp on WiFi. This can be fine in many circumstances, but if out and about and one party is not connected then a charge will be billed.
Does anybody know more?
I’ve never heard of the receiving party paying for a non-reversed charges call outside of the early days of US cellular services.
The originating A Party has always paid for all legs of the call, international or otherwise in Europe.
FaceTime/WhatsApp/Telegram are free if you have WiFi.
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Always have better call quality with Signal over WhatsApp.
It seems to have improved over the passed 12 months, as has Google Duo. I now receive many calls on WhatsApp and where they were mainly poor quality a year ago they seem pretty good now.
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Can you actually have a dial-able UK number on any of these services that will ring on your phone in France if app is running on your data enabled phone and let you pick up the incoming call?
Why would you need one?
We use Vonage that allowed us to keep our UK phone number (easier for relatives) and also have a French number. When home phone rings my mobile rings also.
Interesting replies, but none of which answer my original question!
Has anybody come across UK networks, be they be one of the big four (O2, Vodafone, EE or 3 ) or a VNO, who offer a tariff that means the customer on that tariff has to pay to connect to an incoming overseas call.
Being a user I know all about WhatsApp with no costs but not everybody is prepared to use it.
I recently renewed a 3 contract ( went from a data SIM to data/calls/SMS) - I looked at all their tariffs and there was no mention of any charge to receive a call - I would be totally surprised if any networks do this type of charging.
Caller = A party. Called = B party
Theoretically, B party billing can only occur with a UK based mobile if the B party is roaming abroad. Agreements made when the UK was in the EU mean that the international portion of an incoming call is not charged. I don’t believe there is any agreement for the B party to be billed for receiving a call from abroad if not roaming. With the wonderful Brexit however I wouldn’t be surprised to see B party being billed when roaming in Europe and receiving a call.
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Notalot answered and I agreed with.
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To avoid having a PAYG line that Three is going to block roaming on in 2 months. Even though I really need it just to receive very occasional calls and SMS’s
And to avoid having a Three contract that would bill me £2 per day additional to my monthly fixed contract fee, for being abroad even if I don’t use the phone just have it comnected for banks, credit cards and Amazon to send their annoying 2-factor verification codes to so I can actually deal with the account and confirm transactions when required.
I haven’t contacted EE yet but believe my great contract, 50gb of roaming data might also end at the start of 2022 so I looked at pretty generous sim deals from Leclerk. Makes you laugh that so many businesses call from voip services but still want a phone number from us.
Hi KarenLot. You can transfer your UK number to the Vyke app (https://www.vyke.com). For £16/year you can keep you UK number and should you ever need, you can get a PAC to transfer the number out, should you wish to. You will then receive calls and SMSs on the Vyke app for free. You get charged to send SMSs or make calls with their app using your UK number. You can then get a French SIM for data and local calls
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