Vi (Vodafone Idea) International Roaming

[unnecessary]

This is basically my review of Vi International Roaming and the support they provide (spoiler : the best Indian telco).

Apparently I am on Nepal Trip since last few days and while entering here my personal Vi sim latched on to Nepali operators Ncell & Nepal Telecom (as per my choice). I was having some issues with network with my dad's sim card which is a very old Vodafone SIM from 2018 times. After entering the country I got this message on my personal primary SIM :

Message 1 : They gave me a number to call toll free even on roaming for any customer support.
Message 2 : Welcoming me to Nepal and telling me some info.
Message 3 : Calls/SMS rates

I love their message format and the detailed information without clutter is all a user needs.

To test it out I called their customer support from here which is toll free and within a second the IVR girl said "Welcome to Vi... Please wait while we connect you to our executives..." Within 1 second I hear ringing sound and a guy speaks "Hii, this is **** from Vi Postpaid Premium Care how can I assist you today?".

I'm being super honest guys I wasn't expecting that. Apparently they are connecting roaming customers to a toll free number which routes to their premium postpaid customer care team. For your information I am a Vi Prepaid user.

I told him my issues and he was so professional that he gave me instructions to change the roaming mode from STK and manually latch on to the desired network once and then select automatic. It was flawless and it worked. I recieved the same 3 messages on my dad's phone as well.

This was a super sweet and special experience for me (considering how much I love this brand and how our relationship has been till now). Because I've heard disastrous stories about Airtel & Jio roaming... Which a lot of time doesn't work, doesn't have toll free customer support & many times there is nothing they could do except to come back to India which is like the dumbest thing ever while on a trip.

I'm getting all OTP's and even calls from India on our Vi networks.

Also summarizing my other sim card roaming experiences :
BSNL : no signal (expected )
Jio : only works via wifi calling no signal on mobile + no toll free customer service.
Airtel : Have to manually latch on to a network once then it's fine but no toll free customer service.

I don't know about you guys but because our primary family sim cards are on Vi the trips are super convenient now & we don't have to cry for anything regarding other telcos.

This is not some sort of brand promotion or anything but Vi has done a great job here. Do let me know if you guys want to see some tests with the operators here as well as fiber ISP's (although I will be a lot busy for the next 15 days because of continuous travelling since morning 5 AM to evening 8 PM).

Do share your queries etc. I'll try to answer them.

Cheers to Vi for providing such special treatment to it's customers. I'll be porting more numbers to Vi after coming back.

 

[Ajay15]

I'll be porting more numbers to Vi after coming back.

Don't port out all numbers to one single operator, if their services goes downhill, you wont be left with options.
Also, enjoy your trip, forget telecom for some time.

 

[Iambic Potato]

I don't know what the general consensus is, but my family has positive experiences with both Airtel and Vi for international roaming. My father recently visited Nepal, and Airtel IR (even on prepaid) was a trouble free experience. In fact, back then Airtel was cheaper than Vi IR for Nepal but that might've changed now.

To be honest, it's a bad idea to put all eggs in one basket, if you can catch my drift. I've had sub par experiences with pretty much every telecom network on my trips across the country, but then again, internet connectivity is pretty low on my priority list when I am travelling.

 

[pothi]

Good to know. I wish it survives as a private company. If gov takes major stake, it may become like BSNL.

 

[Lolita_Magnum]

@unnecessary I am going to Nepal for a meeting in a few days, and I was planning to stay there after that for an additional 7 days or so.

Knowing you have been there, any recommendations? Not just from connectivity perspective but also from travelling or places to visit.

 

[unnecessary]

Nice, I've been there 2 months ago and frankly I go there like every 3-4 years. But being an introvert I don't ask a lot of stuff with others that's why I just go with the flow wherever it takes me. Usually trips are with my family so I just relax and test out network so I'll start with this.

• If you want you can have international roaming activated from Indian sim cards which will work fine there. But I'll suggest you to take a sim card there as well (they accept adhaar card). Go with either private operator Ncell or state owned Nepal Telecom. I had tested both and they both were exceptionally fast everywhere with 60+ Mbps 4G speeds. You'll save a lot of cost there with a lot of data usage compared to Internal roaming.
• As you already have Vi postpaid, you'll have to go to sim toolkit and select international as roaming mode to connect to any operator from the two there.
• If you face errors then just select the network manually after changing it to international.
• Save this number for any sort of international network issues 9887012345 (toll free even internationally).

Also, my personal request from you would be to test out the cellular + fiber broadband networks there and share your review as well as some tests from there especially via LAN if you get some free time. As far as I think you have the meeting related to this sector as well because of your profession.

Now, If I have to tell you about places to visit then I suggest you to check out with locals as well because they know a lot about places which even top level websites doesn't know. I will suggest you to try a lot of different food.
Depending upon the place of your meeting and the location you're visiting first, plan further to places that come next such as (my personal favourite : Pashupati Nath Temple you might have already heard about it a lot).
Then you will have a lot of places to travel within the valley.

If I have to tell you more then try to visit Bhojpur which is at Province 1. I love the mountain view from there. While going to bhojpur you'll see terai which is a city region of Nepal near India. Dharan is super beautiful and the last city after which mountains start. Before that you'll have Ithari which is like a hub between all 4 places and biratnagar has Indo Nepal border. While going to Bhojpur you'll see many rivers such as Koshi, Arun etc. they're beautiful.

Phoksundo lake is super beautiful.
You should also visit Khicho ice lake which is near the above one. In fact the whole Mustang valley is super beautiful.
You can also visit panch pokhari which have 5 lakes.
Badimalika is also a good place where you'll get Greenland vibes.

Apart from these beautiful scenic places I suggest you to go to Pokhara and try out different places there as the local guides there are super helpful and polite.
Apart from it you can also visit Everest base camp if that's an option. (I too wanna go there someday). This might be too extreme but as you're a Mumbaikar you'll love the cold weather. The journey there will be amazing if you have watched Uunchai movie then you'll love the place.

As I said, I don't know a lot about places there hence I cannot tell you more but these are the places which my friend had shared with me to visit which lives there and others which we covered with him.

Do let me know if you have any issues or anything, I'll surely try to help you with that. Hopefully this answered your question. You can check out on the internet as well about places which I mostly try not to do because they all might have the most commonly visited places only.

Sorry mods for making this offtopic but I have shared my experience + about international roaming as well so this won't be a problem .

And yes, happy journey @Lolita_Magnum

 

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[Lolita_Magnum]

Thanks

 

[Lolita_Magnum]

@unnecessary I heard people there accept Indian currency, is that true? What is the extent?

 

[unnecessary]

Until last year but not these days. Earlier everyone used to take Indian currency happily but since this year even low value notes such as 10, 20, 50 or 100 are not easily accepted. 500 rupee notes are kind of banned (locally within shops etc). I suggest you to either use UPI international which started working there recently as well as converting the cash to local currency at the exchanges available there. Alternatively, If you have SBI debit card then it will give you the best ATM withdrawal facility with super low charges, just find any SBI Nepal ATM nearby and withdraw local currency from there.

 

[Lolita_Magnum]

They have QR code as well for UPI?
I don't have SBI, but I think I can get a debit card from someone. Do you know what are the charges?
on HDFC, I think it's 110 per transaction plus the 4% for forex.