Where can I buy a "roaming" or "international" SIM card — one with attached phone numbers in multiple countries?

Question

In the past I have found two companies that offered one sim card with multiple (international) numbers attached to it. The first one, of which I forgot the name, offered one sim card with the possibility to add different european numbers to it. They don't longer exist, hopefully because they were ahead of their time.

I recently learned of the existence of a Surinamese company that offers a so called "two country sim". It gives both a Surinamese and a Dutch mobile telephone number. You are always available through both numbers. Both in the Netherlands and in Suriname you won't have roaming costs. The company aims at the large Surinamese community in the Netherlands.

I do like this concept. Since I travel frequently I would really like to have such a sim card. Since telesur proves that the technology works, there should be others. Does anyone know of similar companies, preferably combining Belgian, Dutch, German, French and UK numbers?

Answer 1

What you're probably looking for is often called a "Roaming SIM" or "International SIM". These have numbers for multiple countries attached to them, and generally lower costs to make/receive calls (and sometimes also texts and data) in those countries.

Depending on the one you go for, they may have varying numbers of countries covered from the start, and you may or may not be able to add new countries as needed.

Personally, I have one from TruPhone, but there are a number of other companies out there. With TruPhone, you get one number as standard which is in your home country. As you need them, you add numbers from other countries (from a small-ish list) on a month-by-month basis. Their costs work well for the kind of travelling I do, but it's worth checking out others as the overall cost varies between provides based on the number of countries you need numbers for, the length of time you want numbers, how many calls you do in+out of country etc.

(Handy TruPhone hint - their customer service team on email and phone have always proved utterly useless whenever I've had problems. Instead, describe your issue in 140 characters and post it on twitter, then someone clueful from TruPhone very quickly pops up and helpfully solves your problem!)

I'd say as a general rule, if you go to just one or two countries very often, it'll be cheaper to get a pay-as-you-go SIM card from that country. However, that sim probably won't work when you're home though, sometimes unless you pay extra, sometimes never, so it depends if you need the number to always work or not. If you visit lots of different countries, and/or need to give out various stable and always working country numbers (and you don't want to do call forwarding), then an international sim may be best. Do the maths yourself and decide!