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Roaming / Full Works Plan in China

JWaddo
Visitor

Hi all,

I’m in a bit of a dilemma regarding what to do with my plan. Basically, I’m moving to China for a year soon, and my contract ends in March.

I enquires about upgrading early, which is possibly, and was told that on EE’s new Roam Further (I have the older version current, EU, USA, Aus, NZ, Canada and Mexico) add-on on the new Full Works plan, that China is one of the countries included on the Zone 1 list.

i just wanted to ask if anyone has any experience in using their phone as normal in China - does the network bypass the restrictions, meaning you can use all of your apps, Instagram, YouTube etc like normal over there? Or is it blocked.

i know when I’ve used an E-Sim in China before - it re-routes the traffic out of China, and so I could use most apps as normal. Would this be the case with EE’s new Roam Further (Zone 1) pass

Many thanks in advance. 

2 REPLIES 2
XRaySpeX
EE Community Star
EE Community Star

Roaming passes are only means to help paying for your roaming. They cannot affect how the local networks  handles your usage of them.

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bristolian
EE Community Star
EE Community Star

To add to Xray's reply, I'll pick up a couple of misconceptions here. Your post opens up several issues, so this reply is necessarily long.

When you are roaming, you use the radio coverage of the local network in your host country, but your data traffic is still usually routed through EE's core network in the UK.

Equally using an E-SIM in China is not the important bit, rather it's who issued the SIM. If it was a Chinese network, then your data is routed through them. Travel SIM providers would have their own arrangements for handling data traffic and deciding on routing, but the fact it's an electronic rather than physical SIM is immaterial in this regard. This is exampled by EE routing data exactly the same regardless of whether you have an eSIM or a pSIM.

As mentioned above, the roaming pass is just a means to mitigate the cost of using your phone abroad. It has zero bearing on the routing of your calls, text & data traffic - its only impact is on how your usage is charged for once the billing records pass through EE's systems in the UK.

All this said, EE is a UK operator and its roaming services are intended for users making short trips abroad - not for those long-term resident outside the UK. This is broadly enforced via the Stable Links policy, which generally requires usage in the UK for 2 months in every 4. If you can't meet this criteria due to long-term residence outside the UK, then you need to consider one of two options.

1: Be prepared to pay full roaming rates sooner-or-later and roam whilst maintaining your monthly contract.

2: Consider migrating from pay-monthly to PAYG in plenty of time to complete this before travelling, and accept the cost of early termination.

Migrations from pay-monthly to PAYG require 30days notice, and every new PAYG SIM needs to be used in the UK first, before roaming is auto-enabled for use abroad.

In anycase, PAYG lines are subject to the hibernation policy which requires chargeable usage at least once every 179 days to avoid suspension.