Trying to activate Vodafone UK PAYT SIM in USA - not working
 

I purchased a brand-new Vodafone UK Pay as You Talk SIM on eBay and just received it, but can't activate it here in the US. Is it required for the user to be in the UK first before activating. I did not receive a phone number for the SIM in the package. The only number that worked was '5555' (Vodafone Passport - I was able to activate that oddly but not the line itself). All other calls, including to Customer services do not go through and the phone instantly hangs up when I try to make the call.

Thanks so much to whoever can help me out...

I think you have to register on the SIM's home network in order to be able to activate it properly.

It is possible to activate UK SIMs in North America (I activated my O2 UK SIM here in Canada on Rogers in summer '07) but I got my Voda SIM in London, so all I can tell you is that it works here after you register it there.

You should be able to activate it here. You will have to do it from another phone and you will need a UK address. I used to have an Orange UK sim and I activated it from here.

Here is Voda's number:

Pay as you talk +44 7836 191 919

Vodafone Contact us

Does the address you give matter? (I don't live in the UK nor am I there.)

I only got this SIM for lower data roaming rates in Canada. My operator charges 10.24 USD/MiB while Vodafone UK charges 4.99 GBP/MiB (lower due to exchange rates) in Canada.

Just give them any valid address. You can use a friends address or a hotel or so.

Okay, Let me get this straight: Your provider charges about $10/mb to roam in Canada.Voda lists blackberry and using the phone as a modem as 4.99 GBP. Anything else is 8.00 GBP. So, I am assuming you plan on using the former, for it to be even remotely worthwhile.

I would think that there are cheaper options, for example Base from Belgium: euro 3,50/mb and they charge per kb. So you would really pay what you use.

http://www.base.be/base/en/home/offe...page.aspx/4131

You have to activate it in Belgium, but I would think it would be possible to get someone to do that for you.

Wow. interesting. I wonder what is the cheapest way of getting data roaming in the world. €3.50/MB isn't bad considering it's roaming (is it even lower within the EU?). I find it insane that local prepaid data in Canada is so expensive ($0.03 to $0.05/KB).

There are some networks in Europe where you pay the same as in Belgium (2,50 / mb)
(for example KPN (the Netherlands), the owner of base and e-plus (Germany), also owned by KPN.

Three is even more interesting because they have "three like home" where you will pay the same on all the three networks, so if you have 1 gb data at home you can also use it on (most of) the other three networks. see for example three Italy:
PrePaidGSM: H3G (Italy)

The really good thing about Base is that they charge you by the kb. So if you use msn, text messaging on the internet or other programs that will only use a little bit of data you will only pay what you really used.

I'm aware of how much better the deals are in Europe. My questions applied to use of a foreign (doesn't have to be European) SIM in Canada. If I were travelling about Europe, I'd probably have Vodafone Passport & 3 Like Home & use the latter wherever a 3 network is around and the former elsewhere.

Is charging by the kilobyte that rare? My home operator charges by the kilobyte abroad. Japan's operators charge by the packet.

The part about KPN and E-plus was an answer to your question between brackets.
anyway, I"m not sure how rare charging by the kilobyte is, but as far as I know none of the Dutch operators does.
And as far as I know Base is the best one to use for small amounts of data. But maybe some else has found an even better solution?

So what do I do about getting an activate BASE SIM set up for prepaid int'l roaming & topping it up?

By the way does anyone even know why various operators charge in such high increments anyway? Can't they just tally up by byte or packet like Japan does? Is having high increments even though the capability to calculate smaller sizes exists just to make more money? 10KB isn't a truly terrible increment (my eKit SIM uses 10 but has a 100 minimum!) but honestly, I'd expect by now, we'd have exact calculations. Anyone know other operators besides Philippines ones that charge for Internet by _time_ rather than by volume? This could be useful for large but short sessions. Most of my use is however low volume, so I could better use volume-based charges.