Hi!

I'm travelling to Poland later this month for a week. I go probably twice a year. What would the best SIM be? Looking at it - it appears to be either Go or Orange.

If I go for Orange, will I easily be able to pick one up in Wroclaw? Do they come with an instruction book in English? When I got an Eurotel card in Czech Republic earlier this year, the book was fully in English!

TIA

Lee.

I can help you in a few hours after I'll be back from work.
Please tell where do you want to place most of your calls, do you need data transmission etc.

I'm at home at last and can be more helpful :).

There's no "either Go or Orange" - in Orange Poland there are 2 prepaids: Orange Go and Pop - they're almost identical.

Absolutely no problem! I can't promise you that you can buy it at the Wroclaw airport but there should no problem with Orange or any other prepaid SIMs

Forget it! :censored: Polish ops prefer ripping off on roaming rates than sell prepaids to foreigners :thumbdown: . AFAIK none of Polish prepaids has an English instruction attached to the SIM (and none has an English versions of its webpages) If you want to have English instructions and free incoming calls in Poland, buy Riiing - it's not a Polish joke :(.

And don't imagine too much because Orange is an international GSM brand :P.
When older of the prepaids, Pop was in Idea, it had at least an "automatic customer support" with voice message in English and German - they're gone now
:thumbdown:

If you want to keep the Polish number all year round, consider Sami Swoi (or Simplus) in Plus GSM. It's valid for a year, and unlike in Orange, you won't lose the remaining credit after the expiration date for outgoing calls.

Thanks for that. Most of my usage will be SMS with some voice and a bit of GPRS thrown in (if I can get it to work!), all to the UK.

I only looked at the main Polish page and saw that Sami Swoi was only valid 1/1 whereas Orange was 12mnth incoming.

What would be useful is internet top up incase I want to top up before I go to Poland.

I have though about Riiing, but texts seem quite expensive. I normally text from my 'foreign' phone and people text me back on my UK phone.

Let me quote from PPGSM pages:

All Simplus/Sami Swoi SIMs have 365 day "waiting period" after which the number is disabled. This period is counted from the day when credit drops to zero or expiration date for outgoing calls (depending which is first one). After expiration date for incoming calls the SIM theoretically requires reactivation by a top-up, but in practice incoming calls are possible until the end of the "waiting period".

This means that Plus prepaids are valid for a year (sometmies even more if they forget to disable SIMs).

My recommendations for you are the following.

1) Sami Swoi

0.24 PLN/sms, 2.00 PLN/min to UK (and all Europe), GPRS:
Internet 6.10 PLN/MB (charged each 100 kB)
WAP 30.00 PLN/MB (charged each 10 kB)
Extras: free voicemail, CSD/HSCSD data calls 0.24 PLN/min, landline calls 0.24 PLN/min (useful if you want to use calling cards to decrease your cost of international calls - the best rates are with landline access numbers).

2) Simplus (tariff Easy - the default one or Team7).
0.20 PLN/sms, 2.84 PLN/min to UK, GPRS:
Internet 6.10 PLN/MB (charged each 100 kB)
WAP 30.00 PLN/MB (charged each 10 kB)


Rest of prepaids has much more expensive international SMSes: 0.61 PLN (including Pop in Orange, they have raised the rate from 0.20 recently :ranting2: ).

Heyah is also worth consideration despite expensive international SMSes (best international rates, 10% more on each top-up under very "light" conditions, better rates on GPRS, one of favourite brands of the Honourable Founder of PPGSM :D) but it requires GPRS activation via their Polish-only website and doesn't match your requirements about the validity period.



Theoretically you can, but in practice AFAIK all the Polish prepaids require cards issued in Poland for online top-ups :(.


Feel free to ask any other questions.

I'll givre it a go!

Just another question - have you any idea what the GPRS settings will be? All I think I need to know is the GPRS access point, or could I use my O2 UK one?

I have no idea if Polish SIMs work with any foreign settings.

For Simplus/Sami the settings are the following:

Internet GPRS
APN www.plusgsm.pl
DNS: 212.2.96.51,
DNS secondary: 212.2.96.52,

WAP GPRS
APN: wap.plusgsm.pl
Username: <empty>
Password: <empty>
IP (gateway): 212.2.96.16
Home page: http://wap.plusgsm.pl/
Connection type : Continuous
Secuirty: no
Carrier: GPRS
IP: 212.2.96.16
Verification: normal
Logging: automatic


MMS
APN: mms.plusgsm.pl
Account type: GPRS:data
Name: MMS GPRS
User ID użytkownika: <empty>
Password: <empty>
Address: http://mms.plusgsm.pl:8002

WAP CSD
Home page: http://wap.plusgsm.pl
Connection type : Continuous
Security: no
Carrier: data
Dial-up number: 234
IP: 212.2.96.16
Verification: normal
Data transmission type: ISDN
Transmission speed: auto
Username: plusgsm
Password: plusgsm

Internet CSD is somehow complicated and I'm not sure about the translation so I'll skip this for now :)

Thanks for the info - be prepared for a message on Friday when I can't get it to work!!!

You're welcome! Don't you need Internet CSD settings?

I'm not sure - won't just the GPRS settings work?

Don't worry, they should work without problems. I've just thought of CSD as a kind of backup :). Moreover, especially if your hardware is HSCSD compatible, it might be cheaper for some usages to use CSD than GPRS.

You may also use a "remote configurator".

http://www.simplus.pl/simplus/showDoc.do?a...iguracjaautomat
(Page may display incorrectly under Netscape/Mozilla/Firefox, under MSIE it's OK)

You have the following form on that page:

Wybierz producenta - Select a manufacturer
Wybierz model telefonu - Select the model of a phone
Usługa - Service ("Wszystkie" means "All")
Wpisz numer telefonu - type phone number
(This number doesn't have to be Simplus/Sami Swoi , but must be Polish e.g. +48. This means that you won't be able to download those settings without having a Polish SIM :()

Wyślij - Submit

I tried it and I downloaded WAP GPRS settings (for some LG phone) to my Trium Eclipse with Orange SIM :) (Of course, it doesn't work, but seems to be correct)

Thanks again. Is https://zasilenia.samiswoi.pl/ the top up page?

I ought to have thought about a calling card too, but that's another thread!

Yes, it is but it's useless for you. It accepts money transfers from the Polish banks only or credit/debit cards but also issued in Poland only :(.

You need a calling card for calls to UK, don't you?

If so, I can help you also with it, but in fact it should be another thread, I think in "Other technologies".

www.608608.com

I don't want to discuss about the rates but once again...

Those cards use 00800 (international freephone) access numbers in Poland. I don't know the reason but these numbers are NOT FREE in Poland :ranting2: .
From landlines (incl. payphones) it's not a big problem since extra fee is charged on "per call" basis (usually about 0.10 ?, I don't think if it might be more than 0.25? even including hotel surcharges).
But from mobile phones things are different: either 00800 numbers are unavailable or they are charged as national calls (0.17-0.20 ?/min) !

Thanks for all the info. Succesfully used my Sami Swoi whilst I was in Krakow.

However, I have another small problem ... I forgot to type the code for international roaming before I left and now I cannot use it in the UK (a couple of Polish friends still have my +48 number). Is there any other way I can activate it, perhaps online?

It's nice that using the Polish SIM was successful. :)

As to Sami Swoi/Simplus roaming, unfortunately there's no option of activating roaming via the website :(.
Try e-mail to master@samiswoi.pl, they may help you.

You want to receive SMSes on your Sami Swoi SIM while in UK, don't you?
If the above e-mail fails, provide those Polish people with your UK number or send somebody of your Polish friends a SIM and ask to send it back with roaming turned on - but it's a slow and expensive way :(.

If you knew somebody from airline staff flying to Poland, you could give him/her a SIM to turn the roaming on in Poland, and have it back on the same or the next day :).

Right. I've emailed Sami Swoi and I have to fill in the registration card (thanks www.poltran.com!) and then call the helpdesk in Poland (thanks VOIP!) and they will unlock it!