Hot answers tagged data-plans
29
My personal experience has been that it's best to get a SIM card for each country I travel in. Local providers almost always have the best deals, and buying SIM cards is relatively inexpensive.
Especially in Asian countries (where I have more travel experience) you can easily pick up SIM cards at shopping kiosks almost anywhere, and the rates are really ...
13
It depends on what countries you are travelling to. If the country uses GSM, in most cases the best plan is to make sure you have an unlocked GSM phone, and purchase a pay-as-you-go SIM card in the country you are going to.
If you Google for "International SIM" you will see that there are tons of websites selling pay-as-you-go SIMs, and in many countries, ...
13
AT&T has PayAsYouGo SIM cards, but you can only buy them in the real AT&T stores. You just come in and ask the clerk to sell you one. It costs $20 (as far as I remember). Then there's a $20/200mb (not sure about exact numbers) data plan for this card which is pretty expensive if you really plan to use the internet extensively.
T-Mobile also has a ...
12
Well, turns out this is really easy - I just entered a store and asked for a monthly plan which includes unlimited data, and the clerk was happy to offer me a choice between a couple of available plans, without any requirement except a credit card (no need for zip code or credit check or American credit card / address). The store was T-Mobile, but I think ...
12
First off, I would use Skype, Google Voice (through GMail outside the US) or any other VOIP-like provider. They offer a tariff of ~2c/min and ~30c/min (mobile) for calling to Italian numbers. Obviously if the other person has Skype, you only pay for the internet connection. Your only problem then would be to get an affordable prepaid mobile data plan unless ...
10
If she's there for a year, it might be worth getting a contract, as that may well be cheaper overall. As she already has the phone, she'd want a "SIM Only" deal, if she can get it. A carrier store on/near campus ought to be used to international students, so should be able to help if possible. (I've had a sales guy in a small AT&T shop look at me like I ...
9
In many of the big cities you will find department stores that are dedicated to selling electronics equipment. This is the place to buy your plan.
The reason is that most of the booths are manned by young people and you are more likely to find someone who can speak English. You need to understand that although Chinese people are trying hard to learn English ...
9
My own best way to avoid data roaming fees when travelling is simply NOT to bring a cell phone abroad.
Making a phone call is easy from anywhere without a cell phone and internet connections are provided in many places in cybercafés.
Moreover, this is one object that you won't get stolen if it stays at home.
9
A possible option is a global sim card, like those from GoSim. They work in nearly every country.
Another sneakier method, depending on what you need the data for and how fast it needs to be, is a 3G Kindle. It has free data to download books on Amazon's Whispernet in almost every country in the world, and has a basic experimental web browser on it. With ...
8
I guess you might be in the UK based on the networks you listed?
For within Europe, Vodafone are currently pretty good. Vodafone Passport means it's a single charge to answer/make a call, the rest is at the UK rate. If you're on a £40+/month plan, they'll give you 25mb/day/country of data for free, and 10 free texts a day
When I go outside of Europe, I ...
8
While fairly slow to use, the Kindle 3G web browser works well enough for email and some browsing, and the 3G SIM is contract free and works throughout most of the World. Bar the cost of purchase it makes it free to use the internet for a lot of travelling.
7
Was in the same situation a while ago, and found it impossible to find a prepaid sim for my phone in the states. Short answer is: it's easier use open WiFi hotspots instead of purchasing a prepaid sim card.
The long answer is that you can get really cheap phones for less than $30 on supermarkets, corner stores and petrol stations, but they all have a sim ...
7
Singapore has three mobile phone operators and given the small size of the country, their coverage is fairly similar. Their offerings aren't very differentiated for contract plans, but for pre-pay plans there are some differences.
SingTel has a 'Super Surfer Pack' that offers 1 GB of data for S$7 valid for 7 days.
StarHub offers a mobile data plan that ...
7
This is NZ we're talking about. It's still lagging with a smaller population in terms of technology up-take and bandwidth capacity.
As such, currently, there are no unlimited data plans in NZ for mobile phones (Orcon has introduced them for broadband internet at home). Why? You can read the whole discussion about what might be required for this to happen ...
6
Almost always. Getting a SIM in European countries shouldn't be too hard, as there's usually an airport kiosk or something of the sort that sells SIM cards. If not, just pop over to your city's local mall or shopping street and there's bound to be a carrier store (Orange, Vodafone, T-Mobile, etc). The rates offered by the local SIMs is usually a tenth or ...
6
In Germany I recommend buying a pre-paid SIM from a provider called simyo because they allow you to tether (so do a number of other providers, but with simyo I'm 100% positive because I use their service on a regular basis).
39 euros buys you unlimited calling to all landlines and mobile networks within Germany (including text messages) plus unlimited ...
6
Finally I got a 3 (http://three.co.uk) SIM for 1 pound and unlimited traffic data for 15 pounds.
You can get a 10 pounds - 500Mb plan too.
All of these things as a prepaid plan and working in less than a minute.
You get a ticket with a code to set your SIM card credit and that's all. Take a look at their plans here.
6
There is an important distinction to make between the UMTS/3G USB stick, which is the hardware that allows your computer to connect to a base station, and the contract you have with a mobile network provider to allow you to use their infrastructure, embodied by a SIM card that plugs into the USB stick.
You need both, and they need to be compatible, which ...
5
Pre paid cards data connection in Israel can be quiet expensive (for my opinion at least). From what I've seen in Orange BigTalk web site (sadly available in Hebrew, Russian and Arabic languages only), data connection on pre paid SIM costs are: 1MB = 4 NIS .
You can get those cards in Israel post offices, kiosks, and Orange service points that exists in ...
5
I'd suggest you get a cheap GSM phone (assuming you're not lucky enough to have a GSM phone already), and then pick up a pre-pay (PAYG) sim card when you get to spain.
This will also have the bonus of giving you a Spanish number for the duration of your trip, so people in Spain can call you for a sensible amount of money.
If you only want data, you may ...
5
In Europe you still need a separate SIM for every country (unfortunately). In the uk it is really easy to buy a "pay as you go" sim for your phone or a pay as you go dongle for your laptop. If you don't have a 3G modem just buy one of these. Its easy to google some sites that offer comparison:
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=3g+pay+as+you+go+internet
The ...
5
If you buy any SIM card in China, you will have access restrictions.
If you buy a prepaid card in China or Japan, you will not be able to roam data in another country for any reasonable amount of nmoney. The reason is that the vast majority of the customers want to buy a card only for that market.
Ironically, you will have more luck abroad to buy such a ...
4
Belgium is one of the more expensive countries in Europe when it comes to mobile internet. The cheapest provider I have found so far is the Aldi, but they don't ship, you actually need to buy it at the aldi stores.
Similar formula's are offered by Delhaize and carrefour, but their online descriptions are not really clear about mobile internet. Both are ...
4
The "Text & Web" tariff from O2 Pay as you Go might be a good option for you.
http://www.o2.co.uk/tariffs/payandgo
Topping up £10 in a month gives you 300 free UK texts and 500MB UK web and Wi-Fi and you get to keep the £10 as credit on your phone to use for calls and additional texts.
The text and data allowance runs out at the end of the month but ...
4
Go for the latter: get an unlocked smartphone and a local data plan. By far the cheapest.
Also, you could buy the phone in Thailand. That being more of a developing country, you'd be surprised how cheap (mostly Chinese, but not only) smartphones can be. You should easily be able to get a basic smartphone for under 100 USD. Even the low end Samsungs shouldn't ...
4
Singapore's mobile internet speeds are not exactly the fastest compared to its counterparts in East Asia - this Reuters article SingTel admits its wireless is slow, vows changes provides some insight into the issue.
The article does mention Singtel specifically but based on what I hear from friends, the speeds are barely sufficient for all 3 telcos. I'm ...
3
China has three major networks (all of which the government has some stake in, I believe).
China Unicom is the one you'll want to go after as they operate a GSM/3G network that's compatible with most international cell phones, as opposed to the others which mainly use CDMA (much like AT&T and T-Mobile vs. Verizon and Sprint in the US).
As with most ...
3
In theory a China Mobile SIM card should be able to provide 3G services. In practice I have not been able to get my (3G only) HTC phone to access the internet via such a card. China Unicomm seems to be a better offering in the 3G field. While China Mobile supposedly provides both 2G and 3G services, in practice it is a 2G service.
Buying a SIM may be best ...
3
I did some research, and it looks like there are (at least) three major carriers that offer affordable pre-paid SIM cards with data plans:
Virgin Mobile
Vodafone
Telstra
3
I don't have enough rep to upvote Enchanter Thunderbirds answer, nor comment, but I did the calcs and Woolworths Mobile prepaid sims (http://www.woolworthsmobile.com.au) are the best value as at April 2013. You end up with the same talk time as amaysim which is the other cheapo, but you get more data. Way more data. 5GB. I was there for a month and had over ...
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