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Sports fans headed to Brazil for Rio Olympics could face £3,920 mobile bill shock

  • Spectators jetting off to Brazil for the 16-day Games could be hit with a roaming bill of £3,920– almost 50 times the cost of a ticket to the men’s 100m final

  • Call, text and voicemail retrieval charges are not capped: Olympic spectators risk clocking up more than £47 per day, excluding data costs

  • Mobile data bills alone could hit £197 a day during the Olympics if sports fans opt out of automatic limits provided by networks

  • Brits visiting Rio can expect to spend an average £4.85 on every 1MB of mobile internet data, barely enough to upload three stadium selfies to social media

  • Less than a fifth (18%) of Brits check with their networks before travelling to see if they can save money on roaming costs with a bundle or add on

  • Uswitch.com urges those travelling outside the EU to consult with their networks before leaving to explore roaming options and costs.

UK mobile users travelling to Rio for the Olympic Games could easily rack up a roaming bill of £3,920, according to research by price comparison and switching service Uswitch.com. The sky-high charge – almost 50 times higher than the cheapest ticket to the men’s 100m final – is based on a conservative daily usage over 16 days in Brazil, if British mobile customers opt out of data caps put in place by networks.

Although UK networks place a cap of around £40 on mobile data roaming costs, travellers may be tempted to opt out of this cap as data charges rack up quickly and, in doing so, could easily wind up with a data bill of £197 a day.

In Brazil, £40 will buy you an average of 8MB of mobile data if purchased out of bundle, enough for just 23 social media photo updates, or two minutes streaming the day’s sporting highlights. That’s because just 1MB of mobile data – barely enough to upload three selfies in the Olympic stadium to social media – costs an average of £4.85 out of bundle, with one network charging as much as £8.

In fact, more than one in 10 (13%) mobile users say they returned to a mobile bill of more than £40 after travelling abroad in the last 18 months. Costs for calls, voicemail retrieval and text messages are still uncapped, and – with a call costing up to £2 per minute on some networks – Uswitch.com has calculated that UK mobile users could easily spend over £47 a day on minutes and texts alone. That’s based on a conservative daily usage too: making three five-minute phone calls to the UK, receiving two five-minute phone calls, listening to a two-minute voicemail message, and sending 10 texts.

Certain networks offer a higher level of protection, for example EE doesn’t allow its customers to use data abroad at all without first buying a data bundle, while both Tesco Mobile and iD Mobile allow customers to control their spend abroad by capping their monthly bills.Meanwhile, O2 Travel offers a daily allowance, including unlimited data for £4.99 per day and Vodafone’s World Traveller allows UK mobile users to use their domestic bundle of minutes, texts and data in Brazil for £5 a day – a total of £80 for the 16-day trip .

In spite of this, less than a fifth (18%) of Brits check with their networks before travelling to see if they can save money on roaming costs with a bundle or add on. And, worryingly, 16% think it’s free to use your mobile phone outside the EU, while almost half (49%) aren’t sure.

The table below shows the out-of-bundle charges for pay monthly customers roaming in Brazil across the different networks and as an average cost, as well as any roaming add-ons available:

EEVodafoneThreeO2iD MobileTesco MobileAve. cost
Making calls to UK mobiles (per min)£1.50£1.65£2.00£1.50£2.00£1.49£1.69
Receiving calls (per min)£1.50£1.30£1.25£1.25£2.00£1.49£1.47
Sending 1 SMS text message£0.50£0.35£0.35£0.40£0.50£0.40£0.42
Sending 1 MMS text message£0.40£0.55£0.40£0.40£0.50£0.25£0.42
Voicemail (per min)£1.50£1.65£2.00£1.50£2.00£1.49£1.69
Data (per MB)N/ADaily charge of £3.00 for first 5MB, £15 for 5MB thereafter£6.00£6.00£1.25£8.00£4.85
Roaming add ons for Brazil£5/10MB & £10/25MB (per day), £20/40MB & £40/100MB (per week). 30 mins £6 per month, 60 mins £10, 120 mins £20, 100 texts £6 per month, 250 texts £10Vodafone WorldTraveller: take your UK minutes, texts and data with you for just £5 extra a dayNo add-ons available for countries outside Feel At Home destinationsO2 Travel: unlimited data, 120 minutes and 120 texts for £4.99 per dayNone available for countries outside TakeAway plan destinationsNone available for countries outside Home From Home destinations

Source: Uswitch.com 

Prices in table correct for pay monthly customers travelling to Brazil for the dates of the Olympic Games, checked on 7/7/16

Ernest Doku, mobiles expert at Uswitch.com, says: “Anyone heading to Rio to cheer on Team GB this summer could do some serious damage to their bank balances because some UK networks’ roaming offerings are decidedly unimpressive or, in certain cases, non-existent. Just re-playing a 20-second clip of the 100-metre final would cost you more than £6 out of bundle, and that’s provided there aren’t any false starts.

“Never has there been more urgency for networks to improve rates for overseas mobile usage, particularly now lower roaming prices inside the EU potentially hang in the balance following the UK’s decision to leave.

“Right now, the £40 cap is all well and good in the EU – where roaming prices are currently lower – but potentially astronomical roaming costs further afield means people are tempted to opt out, making them more vulnerable to bill shock.

“Three’s Feel At Home – one of the best roaming deals on the market – has slashed costs to zero in the likes of the USA, New Zealand and Australia, but it’s limited to 19 countries, and Brazil isn’t in the line-up.

“For those going to Rio, and reluctant to hunt out free Wi-Fi, Vodafone’s World Traveller and O2 Travel are the best offerings. You have to opt in at a cost of around £5 a day – so it’s quite pricey for the duration of the Games – but you could store up those calls and social media updates and blitz them every other day instead, only paying an extra £40.”

Find out how you could save over £1,000 a year with Uswitch here.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Lucy Smith

Phone: 020 7148 4663

Email: lucy.smith@uswitch.com

Twitter: @uswitchPR

Notes to editors

 

  1. Average daily data bill of £197.40 + average daily calls and text bill of £47.63 x 16 days in Brazil = £3,920.48

  2. Price of cheapest ticket for men’s 100m final is R$350.00, or £80.50 according to Google conversion rates on 13/07/2016. Prices according Rio2016.com. Calculation is: £3,920.48 / £80.50 = 48.7 times the cost of the ticket.

  3. Average daily calls and texts bill of £47.63 is based on making three five-minute phone calls to the UK per day, receiving two five-minute phone calls, listening to a two-minute voicemail message, and sending 10 text messages. Calculation is: £1.6915 + £1.4710 + £1.692 + £0.4210 = £47.63

  4. Average daily data spend of £197.40 is based on the following usage per week (then divided by 7 to get daily data spend): send/receive 20 text only emails, send/receive 10 emails with images/attachments, 2 hours surfing the web, 1 hour streaming music, download 5 music tracks, download 1 app, 30 minutes video calls like Skype, 50 photos posted or tweeted. Calculation is: 400KB + 3MB + 30MB + 30MB + 20MB + 4MB + 180MB + 17.5MB / 7 days = 40.7 x £4.85 (average price per MB) = £197.40.  File sizes according toAT&T.

  5. AT&T says x1 social media update with photo = 350 KB. Mean charge for 1MB of data by Vodafone (£3), Three (£6), O2 (£6), iD Mobile (£1.25) and Tesco Mobile (£8) is £4.85. EE not included in mean data cost as add-ons must be purchased to use EE mobile data abroad.

  6. As per the Ofcomwebsite, all mobile operators have to cap mobile data usage at €50 (around £40), wherever you travel in the world, unless you choose to opt out.

  7. £40 (mobile data cap) / £4.85 (mean price per MB of data) = 8.25MB of data. File sizes according to AT&T.

  8. In a Uswitch.com survey of 2,171 UK telecoms customers carried out between 13/04/16 and 15/04/16 via Censuswide, respondents were asked ‘Have you received a mobile bill greater than £40 after travelling abroad in the last 18 months?’ – 13.1% said yes, 60.8% said no, 26.1% hadn’t travelled abroad

  9. Roaming information and prices according toEE.co.uko2.co.ukVodafone.co.ukTescomobile.com and iDMobile.co.uk

  10. In a Uswitch.com survey of 2,171 UK telecoms customers carried out between 13/04/16 and 15/04/16 via Censuswide, respondents were asked whether the following statement best described them when travelling abroad with their mobile phone: ‘I always check with my network before I leave to find out if there's a roaming bundle that will give me cheaper calls, texts and data’, - 17.5% of respondents selected this option.

  11. In the same survey, respondents were asked whether they thought the following statement was true or false: ‘There are now no extra charges for people from the UK using their mobiles in non EU countries’, to which 16.4% selected ‘true’, 35.01% selected ‘false’, and 48.5% selected ‘unsure/don’t know’.

  12. AT&Tsuggests streaming 1 min video requires 4MB mobile data, so watching a 20-second clip of the final would require 1.3MB - costing £6.31 (ave across networks, see table)

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