Hot answers tagged mobile-operators
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, ...
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
7-Eleven sells SIM cards for $10. They are a MVNO reselling Rogers service. Their main attraction is that prepaid credits are valid for one full year. However, it is not available for sale in all provinces (notably Quebec).
6
There's a new wiki site I've only recently become aware of (thanks mostly to other posters on this site!) specifically for prepaid data and sim cards.
So here's their Thailand page.
It looks like there are three main carriers - dtac, AIS and True Move, and there's quite a variety of rates. One interesting one is the unlimited data one, where the data is ...
6
I have an iPhone 4 on Telstra's 3G network and it switched over immediately as soon as I switched it on in China.
I immediately received an SMS telling me that data was disabled, but could be switched on at a cost. I just used wifi hotspots for data as necessary.
The phone switched over to China Telecom's network and call quality and coverage were ...
6
With Fido you can get a pre-pay sim for $10.
There are a variety of prepaid rates available. Personally I use the $10/month rate.
You can change rates whenever you refill your account.
From Google it looks like there are plenty of Fido stores in Vancouver. So you could pop in and pick up a sim when you arrive.
The Fido website is good for managing your ...
6
The person calling you will be calling your Australian number, so they will be charged whatever they normally pay for a call to Australia. As you are roaming, you will be charged for receiving the call at whatever your roaming rate is.
In most cases, the call itself will actually route via Australia and back to wherever you are! It's possible that if your ...
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 ...
4
As Mark said there are DTAC, AIS and True Move. I'd go for True Move because they offer free wifi access across Bangkok. But if you're not in Bangkok then AIS would be the best coverage.
AIS > http://www.ais.co.th/12call/en/sim-card.html
DTAC > http://www.dtac.co.th/en/postpaid/products/ShortStayVisitors.html
True Move > I cannot find the information in ...
4
Operators Lyca and Lebara are the best bet for your usage. Currently both of them charge around 4ct per minute to mobile and 1ct per minute to landline. I've seen couple of operators claiming to be lower than the above two, but they come with terms and conditions. At the end, Lyca/Lebara turns out to be cheaper.
Here are few tricks you can try to save few ...
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
Vodafone are the only company I know of that have their own network across essentially all of Europe. Their roaming prices are not super cheap, and are dependent on where you buy your SIM card. If you buy your SIM card in the UK, the prices can be accessed here. A calling card may be a better option.
4
While Europe does have per country operators, there are some operators that will provide very low roaming rates. I've not tried any of them though, and not all of them cover the whole of Europe yet.
Be aware that some countries (such as the UK) have a very competitive Pay As You Go market with very cheap flexible sims available with bundled data etc, while ...
4
The price sounds rather high....
Looking on the Rogers Website I see a Pay As You Go SIM for $9.99, and you can get plans where you pay on the days you use it. That was my plan for when I'm in Canada.
A price of $70 sounds like it includes a phone too. I'd suggest trying a bigger Rogers store and hope you get someone more helpful the 2nd time!
(You can ...
3
Wikipedia claims Telefónica de España has a CDMA2000 network, like Verizon. If that's the case then your cheapest route is almost certainly to unlock your device and register it with Telefónica while you're there. I assume they have prepaid data plans, I'm not sure of the specifics.
2
Verizon wireless will send you a free global loaner phone (for just the $10 cost of roundtrip shipping which they add to your bill.) You can keep it for a month and continue to use your old phone number. They have several dual mode phones available, many of them are smart phones from Moto, Samsung, HTC, etc. Not sure if your current data plan applies however ...
2
You should check what features your carrier offers directly. For example with AT&T if you roam with the basic feature, you pay nothing on a month-to-month basis, but are charged a certain rate per minute while abroad.
In my case I travel to France a lot so I would pay a flat $1.39 per minute while roaming in France (rounded up to whole minutes). This ...
2
It's not a well publicised network, but a cheap one for PAYG (with unlimited data) is Giffgaff.
It uses the O2 network, and keeps the costs low by not having any phone customer support, it's all forum and online ticket based. £10 gets you 250 minutes, unlimited texts and unlimited data (but unlike the O2 offer the £10 is spent on this offer, it's not still ...
2
At the airport (luggage pickup) you will see a TrueMove-H stand (usually unmanned) with free SIM cards for travellers. They have a very small deposit on them also, but can be topped up at any 7-11 (millions of them!). These are also preset with important numbers such as tourist police and EMS services and immigration etc. They are also set to receive English ...
2
It's a pain in the butt to get mobile access in Turkey, but you it can be done. Your chances depend on how nice the person you find to sell you the prepaid SIM is, since they'll have to register the IMEI on your mobile phone with them.
Easiest option in Turkey is to buy one of their portable 3G hotspots - they run about US$80 and include the hotspot ...
1
Try Rebtel. Unlike other VOIP calling services, the way Rebtel works is that it connects over a normal phone call locally, then connects to the destination country over the Internet, and then terminates over a local phone network again. This way, you don't use data and you only pay for local minutes (plus Rebtel fees), which should be cheap enough on ...
1
Basically to get a reasonable deal you need to have an unlocked phone, so make sure your iPhone is unlocked before you come.
And then you need to do your homework and check all the main providers to see what they have on offer at the time you are ready to buy it - it does change quite often. The main operators are: Vodafone, O2, Three, T-Mobile, Virgin ...
1
I used to work in mobile phone billing, but that was a long time ago (15 years or so). At the times the rules were simple: Outgoing calls were billed at the rate of the roaming provider + roaming charges. Incoming calls were charged to the person calling you at his local rate to call you at your current location + roaming charges charged to you + ...
1
If your phone is unlocked' then instead of getting a Sim card from one of the main providers stated above (cellcom or orange) it is easier and cheaper to rent a sim card (you can get also a phone as well) for the short term period you need it for. You can get packages for data usage and cheap calls overseas. you can check the prices at ...
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