International or National SIM?
 

I take a vacation in Europe once per year and usually take my unlocked GSM phone with me. I'm now looking for a good SIM card due to two recent changes: (1) my United Mobile SIM card seems dead and (2) I'm getting an unlocked iPhone.

Requirements

* Free incoming calls
* Reasonable rates to call the US

Really nice to have

* Free incoming text messages
* Reasonable GPRS data rates (for the iPhone)

Questions

Are there any international SIM cards that satisfy the above? Or should I just get a new SIM card each year depending on the country I go to? For example, this August, I'm heading to Germany, so should I just get some German SIM card?

I really suggest you a German card if you are going just to Germany. You can get very interesting deals.

Well, I'm going to Germany this year, but it'll be some different European country next year and still a different one after that. Is it a better deal to get a national SIM card in each of those countries or would an international SIM card pan out better in the end?

Also, what are good deals available in Germany?

It's a little bit boring to buy one sim for each country you visit:p but if you' ve the time, you can do it. Will you receive a lot of calls? If so, it's better for you to buy an international sim like Travelsim (free incoming calls).
Here--->http://www.prepaidgsm.net/en/germany.html the german's sim

Time won't be an issue, but I can't figure out if I'd end up spending way more money this way.

Any suggestions on which of these is the best deal, especially if I want to have access to GPRS data?

PrePaidGSM: O2 (Germany) (you can subscribe o2 flat, 3,50 euro/one day)

brikis98 is interested in data and Germany only. So buying a German card is, by far, the best, easiest and cheapest choice. If next year he will go somewhere else he can buy another card. Local prepaid cards are cheap to buy and usually help to save a lot of money, expecially on data.

It's full of discussions about data in Germany on this section of the forum, just make a little search.

Yes, I two second the suggestion of national cards rather than an international one. They are so cheap now anyhow (or even free), that you will always be better off financially getting national SIM's.

Also, remember that pretty much all "national" SIM's are of course also just as "International" as anything else, as you can roam with them. If you buy a German SIM this year, you can also use it next year elsewhere in Europe, and with the caps on prices within the EU, this is not even too expensive. Better still with something like a German Solomo Pro, incoming rates are only 10c/min anywhere in the EU (and free in Germany of course). You also mentioned SMS. Incoming SMS is always free anywhere on any European SIM anywhere in Europe. Only extremely backwards US networks have the nerve to charge your incoming SMS's to your monthly bundle!! (One of the stupidest things I have ever heard of, especially considering that SMS is sent using surplus bandwidth and also considering the amount of data that is sent in an SMS!!)

As mentioned above, especially for extremely cheap data/internet deals, a national SIM is far better value. Check out the internet offers in Germany by Tchibo etc. that are posted all over this forum. I presume your iPhone has 3G as well as GPRS, or is it an old one? If indeed it is only GPRS, even the cheapest German data bundles (which rely on the congested E-Plus network) will still work very well. It is only 3G that sometimes gets a bit slow on those.

One of the OP's factors that has not been mentioned is "reasonable rates to call the US." If the SIM that you choose has free incoming calls, then your best bet for calls to the US is probably a call-back service like Callback World, which is the one that I use.

Some German SIMs, such as Solomo Pro and Fonic, have rates of 9 cents a minute to USA, cheaper than Callbackworld and almost all callback providers

All European SIMs have free incoming calls in the country of origin (and the cost is capped when roaming within the EU to about 20 cents/min, depending on the local VAT rate). As mentioned above, several German SIMs have 9 cent/min calls to the US. Solomo is probably the best deal overall, but only available online. Fonic is also 9 cents, and widely available in drugstores and supermarkets. Both offer 24 cent/MB standard data rate.

Also I would not recommend this as being best value for money for data in Germany these days!

Just got back from my trip to Germany. As recommended on this forum, I got a Fonic SIM card at Lidl, which worked out great. If I remember correctly, it cost something like 9 Euro and had ~6 Euro of starter credit on it, which is a pretty sweet deal. I also bought a 20 Euro top up card to bring the total to 26 Euro, which turned out to be far more than I needed. After 12 days of somewhat heavy data usage (using Google Maps, checking email, looking up train schedules with the nice ZugInfo iPhone app, browsing the web a bit) and a little bit of phone usage (a few calls within Germany and a few to the US), I still had 13 Euros of credit left. I had decent connectivity all over (I was in Berlin, Potsdam, Dresden, St. Goar, Bacharach and a few other places) with 3G service in the larger cities and Edge connectivity elsewhere. The only difficulty was activation, which was a bit confusing with my crappy understanding of German, but once I got it figured out, it was smooth sailing from there.

Thanks for the help folks :)

If you'd like to use your (or one of your SIMs) SIM for long duration calls to the US and other countries I can recommend you

CallYa OpenEnd Talk&SMS ? Prepaid-Wiki

This is a Vodafone CallYa Prepaid tariff called CallYa Open End Talk&SMS which will be charged with 29€ct per call to german landline.

The CallYa SIMs are very cheap now as they usually come with a simlocked mobile. You may find even offers for 1€ with 10€ balance.

With this method you call DialNow | Cheap International Calls and any further minute to the US will cost you an additional €0,5ct.

For data (9€ct/min) this card is not as cheap as others (i.e.blau.de) which are 24€ct/MB

Detailed info on German prepaid offers you'll find on Prepaid-Wiki

For international use I like my airBalticcard | About airBalticcard Mobile (no data!).