How to save money on international roaming charges while traveling in Spain

If you plan to travel to Spain, roaming charges can be a big surprise. For example, US subscribers of T-Mobile can expect to pay $1.40 per minute (link). UK subscribers might be able to make calls a little cheaper – only if roaming within the same network (Vodafone, for example).

In most cases, however, you can expect to spend around $1 per minute every time you answer your phone in Spain. If you are on a 2-week vacation and talk for 30 minutes every day, your carrier will hit you with a $420 bill when you come back. Ouch!

Various “international SIM card” solutions are quite popular. Companies like Global SIM, Oneroam and others provide travel SIMs that do not have an inbound charge. Dozens of websites can be found by googling for “international SIM”. All of these products are quite similar – you get a SIM card from Lichtenstein, Estonia or some other country, rather expensive to call. To reach you overseas, people will need to dial your “other” international mobile number, which will cost them around the same $0.50-$1 per minute; that somewhat defeats the purpose.

However, you can easily save 90% on roaming and still answer your UK or US phone in Spain by purchasing a DID number (virtual number) and diverting your mobile to that number before you leave! This other option is much cheaper; all you need is a local (Spanish in this case) SIM card and a UK DID number. Here is how it works.

– Get a local UK number (virtual number) from one of the websites offering DID numbers like Hottelecom.net or DIDlogic.com

– Divert your UK mobile to that virtual number.

– Divert your virtual number to your Spanish phone ($0.09 per minute at DIDlogic.com)

When you arrive in Spain, calls to your UK mobile will be sent to your Spanish SIM and you can answer your UK phone for only $0.11 per minute (plus the cost of local forwarding to the UK number).

You can set this up in many other countries in the same fashion. Businessmen who travel frequently and absolutely must stay in touch with their clients are known to run up $1,000, $3,000 and sometimes even $10,000 per month in roaming charges. You can save serious money with virtual numbers (DID) while traveling. Here is another example.

– You live in California and must travel to Germany…$1-$2 per minute roaming charge!

– Get a US number in most CA cities at DIDlogic.com and forward your phone

– Forward the Californian virtual number to your German SIM

– Pay only $0.05-$0.11 per minute instead!

You can save even more by changing the forwarding destination at your DIDLogic.com account. Forward your virtual number to a landline phone in another country – landlines are very cheap to call – and only pay around $0.01 per minute to answer calls to your mobile in most of the EU, $0.01-$0.05 in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.

This option works from many other countries where you can buy virtual phone numbers (DID numbers) from DIDlogic.com: Australia, Brazil, Bulgaria, China, Iran, Israel, Latvia, Lithuania, Malaysia, New Zealand, Poland, Russia, South Africa, Thailand and the United States.