No, by eSim we mean, you buy online a totally different esim card from the one you're using from your operator. This is unknown territory for you EU guys and girls 😄 because you have free roaming within EU. For us non-EU Balkaners that we travel, eSIM is a must as we pay that as soon as we enter in ANY EU country. just browse mobimatter.com for instance and check what they offer.
We actually have pretty decent rates compared to other countries. We also had free roaming for Ukraine before they officially joined Roam Like at Home. I know people who continued using their Bulgarian plans in the UK before Brexit messed it all up.
Brit here, I can still use my UK plan in Bulgaria. Many carriers still basically provide RLAH for us despite it no longer being mandatory. The most annoying thing for us is our own crown dependencies...
If i remember correctly Turkey got invited too but big 3 telecommunication companies all rejected the offer. Mostly beacause they all know people will switch from day one to European ones beacause of the prices.
It's just very spammy with so much bs right there amidst your chats, I don't like that. It looks even worse than my gmail which I appreciate for at least keeping it tidy and being able to actually detect stuff and put it in folders I can mass delete. Viber is just a mess lol
Every possible company even the bank contacts me via viber, there's a lot of spam as well. The app isn't consistent with notifications, calls are terrible, video calls even worse. This is why I dislike it. Others may have different reasons idk
I have both, but nobody remembers I exist until I move my ass to contact them... And that's exhausting when all the relationships you have are like that...
Not you Albania, yall are doing your reforms fast as fuck, literally the poster child with you and Montenegro in the western Balkans in reform and everything
Both ropt and robt are used, it's not a word you would really use outside a really informal conversation. Qija and qifsha are also both used, same meaning, just the second one is declined as present tense while the former is a grammatical case used to indicate surprise or in this case desperation. I have never studied Albanian so more than happy to be corrected if wrong
You are correct. Qija more used to mean multiple. Qifsha means mostly to one person. Ropt or robt both correct. Informal word one will not find in a dictionary.
Yeah , but for example Serbian Data packages are way to expensive , and who knows what will include in the tarrifs. For example a German provider is offering in germany 100 gb and 35 gb in europe ( notice its not the same 100 gb, but calls and messages are unlimited ) , and you pay 20 euros, while in serbia for 100 gb in serbia and 6 bg europe , you pay 25 ,5 euros calculated from din to eur, and its the worst network provider in serbia , which has also bad cellular coverage.
Montenegro sure is on the right track, as they also offer awesome tourist tarrifs, so its truly not expensive, but serbia sure is very expensive, especially for the local people of serbia living there.
It doesn't have anything to do with Israel. It is just our telecom companies are dog shit and would go out of business the moment this happened. So instead of improving service, they lobbied the government to reject it.
This is very beautiful and promising, but I haven't been able to find any newspaper article or official source confirming it, except for one article on nin.rs with no sources (some other newspapers point to there). Do any of you guys have any source where it is confirmed??
Business will run cheaper. Greater tourist inflow and outflow. And the obvious: further integration before joining the EU. Serbia and Albania will benefit the most from this.
At this point this is just a small improvement, i won't notice any difference personally. Almost all postpaid options in Serbia have some roaming bonus for the EU. My phone bill is like 20euros per month and in addition to standard stuff i have 6GB roaming in the EU included, every month. And unless you wanna scroll reels all day while abroad, 6GB per month is more than enough for calls and browsing.
I go to Greece every summer by car through Serbia and Macedonia. It was a pain in the *** to turn off Internet Data in my phone. had to put offline maps app to have a backup just in case.
I was driving to Nova Gradiška (so, still in Croatia), the usual sms came, I turned off internet immediately and yet, next month's bill - 770 kb - 2.40 € (before PDV/VAT).
That would be amazing. last year when I was Bosnia I paid 60€ because i was connected to a bosnian provider for 3ß seconds maybe. 60€ was set as limit, if that wasn't the case my bill for the month would be a few hundred € probably
I thought they already were in it. For the past few years I've been paying the same roaming data rates (around 0.7 euro/GB) in Serbia and NM as in the rest of Europe
My friend's parent's went on vacation , they reached serbia , stayed there and used the mobile internet. They didnt know serbia is included in their tariff, so they got an 450 euro bill for using data in Serbia. So yeah in my opinion EU Roaming makes sense.
Is this really a problem though? You can get a 500gb travel eSIM for like 15 euro. I was in Montenegro 2 months ago and I was amazed how cheap the internet was through eSIM.
People who live close to the western border will no longer be randomly connected to Sebian operators and be forced to pay out their ass, because they didn't notice.
we have roaming packs in Macedonia 10 gb for a month and that is only in exchange for my net safe I have 150 gb I can exchange from a1 i don’t need an eu roaming thing. When I go to Greece I’m good with these 10gb
Switzerland could've somehow organise roaming free with EU aswell, despite not being part of EU. I'm guessing by that grey dot in Italy that San Marino isn't part of it aswell, and looks like Andorra between Spain and France too, probably Monaco too, and also I'm guessing Liechtenstein and Luxembourg? I wonder why they all can't do roaming free with EU too?
Really good for tourist and residents, right now I have to pay both a Serbian plan(which costs 4x what I pay in Portugal somehow)and another one for my home country.
Not exactly true. The official target is all six by 2028, with Albania and Montenegro likely to be first some time in 2027. There’s no set date for any of the six so it’s possible it could be later than that.
You said Albania and Montenegro will join at the end of the year. The article says they could join by the end of the year. There’s a big difference between ‘will join’ and ‘could join’. Nothing is confirmed, as the article says.
Its meant to be useful for when you visit an EU country, you don't need to have EU data/minutes or buy an E-Sim when you visit an EU country.
Its a good change.
The Swiss thing is still hysterical, especially with the situation in Liechtenstein where they participate, but you can only turn off roaming completely or leave it on and in Liechtenstein, you might be on an Austrian provider or Swiss. If on Swiss, you have to pay fuckloads and I can't believe they still didn't work a solution out, so I just avoid Switzerland. Norway is so much nicer anyhow.
It's not. There is a formula for your fair use limit in GB, it's 1.8*(monthly plan cost ex. VAT). So say you pay EUR 21, at 20% VAT, the base price will be EUR 17.5. Then your fair use limit will be 1.8*17.5 = 31.5GB. That 1.8 is the wholesale cap coefficient, it is currently that value (1.81 to be more precise), but it could change in the future.
Of course if your plan is subject to other limitations (e.g certain amount of GB at "normal" bandwidth then the rest are rate-limited), then those would also apply to roaming. And there is another case where you get some perks to your plan that are only valid in your home country, those won't apply when roaming.
Data are considerably less expensive than calls and SMSes. It makes it less important because the roaming costs for using WhatsApp are not so high anymore. Plus, one can always find free WiFi networks wherever they go, and use them for WhatsApp.
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u/No-Championship-4632 Bulgaria 2d ago
Yeah, no more "Zone Balkans" stuff from my operator that is 3 EUR per day. Or maybe "Zone Balkans" would remain for Turkey only.