International roaming is a service offered by mobile operators enabling you to use your mobile phone when abroad. All mobile operators in Malaysia, depending on your tariff package, provide international roaming. When you travel to a foreign country and your mobile phone keeps working that’s mean, you are roaming. You can make & receive mobile phone calls, write text messages (SMS) or surf the internet and download content.
Your calls, SMS and other data services are operated by a foreign network because your home provider does not normally operate in that country. For providing this service, the foreign network operator charges your home operator and your home operator passes this additional cost on to you. This is why some people having so called heart attach when receiving shocking expensive phone bills whenever they reach home
1. Voice Roaming
When you make or receive a call while abroad you are using voice roaming.
Receiving a call from Malaysia
Making a call from overseato Malaysia
| Making a roaming voice call | Receiving a roaming voice call |
| You dial a mobile phone number. Your host operator receives your call | A friend dials your mobile phone number |
Seeing an international number, it transfers the call via 'international transit' to your friend's home operator | Your friend's operator routes the call to your home operator (which may or may not be the same as yours) |
Your friend's home operator transfers the call to your friend. The connection is established | Your home operator knows that you are currently roaming through a host operator in a foreign country, so it transfers the call to the host operator via 'international transit' |
| The host operator receives the call and transfers it to you. The connection is established |
Billing Procedure:
1. and 2. step: Your friend pays the cost to his/her operator as if you were at home.
2. step: Your operator redirecting the call must pay the cost of the international transit and this will be charged to you.
3. step: Foreign operator will charge your operator the wholesale price for the incoming call in its network and these costs will be charged to you.
Your friend pays the price of the standard local call.
2. Sms Roaming
When you send or receive an SMS while abroad you are an SMS roamer.
Your Malaysia friend sending SMS to you
You sending SMS to your Malaysia friend
| Sending a text message (SMS) | Receiving a text message (SMS) |
| You send an SMS to a friend while abroad. | A friend sends you an SMS while you are abroad |
| The host operator transfers the SMS to your home operator | Your friend's operator transfers the SMS to your home operator |
Your home operator transfers the SMS to your friend's operator | Your home operator transfers the SMS to your host operator |
When you send an SMS while abroad, your operator will charge you a higher fee than the normal cost of an SMS. This fee includes additional costs for using the visiting network and transferring the SMS back to the home network. Operators do not charge for receiving an SMS abroad.
3. Data Roaming
You can also use various data services while abroad: sending & receiving multimedia messages, reading & sending emails, using the internet via your handset or even connecting your laptop to the internet via a data card
| Sending multimedia message | Receiving multimedia message |
| The MMS is sent by the host operator via international transit | The MMS is sent by your friend's operator to your home operator |
| The international transit transfers the MMS to your home operator | Your home operator transfers the MMS by international transit |
| The home operator transfers the MMS to your friend's operator | The international transit system transfers the MMS to your host operator. |
Connecting to the internet while abroad |
| Your host operator transfers your data, via international transit, to your home operator. |
| Your home operator connects you to the internet, your e-mail and other services. |
The price of a mobile data service is very often based on the volume of the data, which is measured either in kilobytes (KB) or megabytes (MB). An email is normally between 1 and 50KB; a page of your favourite online newspaper can be 100KB or more. To download a song you would have to transfer 2 to 5MBs of data. Your operator will charge you a price that also includes the fee that the visited network charges the home operator to provide the service
Above 3 roaming activities might cost you a lot if you don't have proper roaming plan and packages and a wise precaution. Some might get shocked by thousand ringgit bill even they made only few minutes call from oversea. That's is why, Flexiroam is a wisest choice for frequent travellers especially those who gonna make and receive a number of calls who, in many cases are business travellers
Instead of making direct connection from oversea to Malaysia, Flexiroam acts as middle man and establish the connection between this two destinations. Thus, you just need to pay local call forward charge for example Digi to Digi while both of you in Malaysia. The fact that you're using international sim and making call and get charge as if you're in Malaysia isn't a joke. Yes, you transfer your call to Flexiroam and Flexiroam forward the call to your friend. Plus, he/she will get incoming call FROM YOU NUMBER instead of oversea.
You just need to pay flat rate RM10 perday! No more shocking bills :)
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