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International vs. Roaming Calls
19.03.2015
The National Authority for Management and Regulation in Communications (ANCOM) reminds the telephony users that calls to international destinations and outbound (or incoming) roaming calls have different costs and require different dialling formats.
With a view to facilitating the users’ effective management of roaming and international voice costs, ANCOM specifies that the roaming service offers the possibility to use the mobile telephone when travelling abroad, whereas the international call service enables the users in Romania to call international numbers from the fixed or mobile telephone.
When using the mobile telephone in roaming, the users pay both for the outgoing calls and for the incoming ones, as well as for internet access or for sending SMS, whereas receiving SMS is cost-free. Tariffs may depend on the country where the users travel and on the local network they use, as well as on the called destination (within the same country, to Romania or to another country) and are higher than the national ones. Further details are available here. Moreover, the users should know that the calls they initiate from Romania towards the telephone number of a person who is travelling abroad using the roaming service does not involve additional costs, i.e. they are charged as if the called party were in the country.
Nevertheless, when a user from Romania initiates an international call while he/she is in the country, the tariff is usually higher than the one for national calls and depends on the destinations country, the type of network (fixed or mobile) or even the destination network. The operators in Romania offer tariff plans (subscriptions or extra-options) including a certain number of minutes to international destinations, therefore the users would not incur additional costs when calling numbers from the respective countries. Though, the users must pay attention to whether the international minutes included may be used both for calling both fixed and mobile networks, as well as to whether they include calls to the chosen destination countries or networks. Moreover, the users can consult alternative offers available on the market, such as prepaid cards specially designed for international calls.
ANCOM reminds the users that, no additional prefix is needed when dialling a telephone number that uses the roaming service. For calls initiated in Romania towards an international number, the users must dial the international code ”00” (or ”+”), followed by the country prefix (e.g. ”1” for the USA or “39” pentru Italia) followed by the national number without the prefix ”0” (excepting Italy). Read more on dialling international numbers here.
ANCOM’s statistical data regarding the roaming services indicate that, in the first half of 2014, mobile telephony users talked over the telephone 241 million minutes in roaming (of which, 65 million outgoing and 176 million incoming call minutes) and sent 55 million SMS. The average duration of an outgoing roaming call was 1 minute and 58 seconds, whereas the average duration of an incoming call was 2 minutes and 57 seconds.
As for international calls, in the first half of 2014, the users of mobile telephone services initiated international calls totalling 909 million minutes, with an average call duration of 5 minutes and 3 seconds and sent approximately 39 million SMS to international networks, while the users of fixed telephone services initiated calls towards foreign networks totalling 156 million minutes, with an average of 6 minutes per access line and an average duration of an international call of 4 minutes and 33 seconds.
For finding the most advantageous telephony offers, including minutes to international destinations or roaming calls, the users may access www.veritel.ro, the tariff comparison tool made available, cost-free, by ANCOM.
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