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Is it necessary to buy an austrian SIM card with Austrian +43 number to use Free WiFi in Austria ? Do the Airport or City Wifis work with any international number that belongs to any country around the globe ? or would a SIM card of any EU country work ?

For those travellers who only needs to receive text messages in foreign land what is the cheapest method of getting a number of that country only for SMS ?

  1. Buying an international SIM card like Matrix from the home land ?
  2. Buying a skype number (or any alternative if skype is not available in that country) and forward SMS to actual number of homeland (is it doable ?)
  3. is there any other SMS forwarding service ? that does the same
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As for your first question: There's no requirement to have an Austrian number in order to connect to WiFs - at least at all of the places in Austria I've been to recently. I'm connecting without trouble with a UK number. I would expect that any international SIM would work, as there's nothing that ties WiFi with the SIM card.

As for your second question, this depends very much on where your SMS destination country is. Or is it only for inbound? In Austria, I'm using a Yesss SIM card, one of the cheapest providers in Austria. The basic SIM costs EUR 10, that cost includes the SIM and 1000 minutes of voice or 1000 SMS inside Austria for 1 month. International calls are charged as per the list here

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    In some venues, you have to receive a code by SMS in order to utilize the free WiFi, and this is only sent to local phone numbers - I am sure this is why the OP is asking.
    – Burhan Khalid
    Jul 11, 2016 at 9:36
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    I see - never had that in any of the Austrian airports and such.
    – Anton Schwaighofer
    Jul 11, 2016 at 11:21
  • Yes I was asking for the activation code
    – Neel Basu
    Jul 12, 2016 at 10:46
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You need no SIM to connect to WiFi anywhere, including Austria.

SMS is wholly different, and does need a SIM.

For travellers who need only to receive messages in foreign lands, why do they have to be TXT or SMS messages?

What would be difficult about using Facebook, for instance?

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  • In some cases you need a local phone number to receive a code for the WiFi, as mentioned in the comments to the other answer.
    – Willeke ♦
    Mar 21, 2022 at 15:37
  • @Willeke If that's true, I apologise. If that's true, it's also wholly arbitrary and technically unjustifiable.
    – Robbie Goodwin
    Mar 25, 2022 at 22:34

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