Data plan only sim?
 

I have a question: why is data roaming so terribly, wickedly expensive? I mean the cheapest international sims offer data services for $3/mb... whereas some of them offer phone calls for as little as $0.15/min.

That asked (and I'm really interested in the answer) :D here is my second question:
Does an international sim exist that offers global DATA roaming only, preferably at a tremendously reasonable pice? Thanks :)

Yes, we do

Taking a look at PaytooMobile - Rates and coverage I would say you are even MORE expensive than what Sofia calls "wickedly expensive" ($3/Mb). For example 2.5 EUR for Europe (checked UK and DE) and I don't know ... 12 EUR/Mb for Ukraine (just to take an example off the beaten path and because it was close to UK alphabetically)?

Maybe you can get these people to rent you a SIM & it might work in other devices with same tinkering: iPhoneTrip: travel with iPhone, unlimited internet SIM card

It should work out to be cheaper provided you utilise it a whole lot & replace other things with it like regular phones with VoIP.

Thanks for the tips :) It is amazing how phone and data both go through the same channels (assumedly) and calls can be cheap, yet data so expense. Perhaps there is a golden market somewhere for this sort of thing........ :D

2.5 - 3 EUR for 1MB of data is cheap for U.S. travelers to roam intl. ATT and T-Mobile charge $15-$20/mb.
IF you are a heavy intl U.s. traveler, ATT offers unlimited data roaming for about $65/mo. You have to commit to a year, I believe. Verizon and Sprint even offer unlimited intl. data plans. Since they are not GSM carriers you have to use one of a limited number of GSM phones they allow you to use. price is also under $70/mo for unlimited data.
Those unlimited data plans do include, I believe, domestic data as well.

...mike

I think you can stick the special SIM VZ/Sprint/Bell/Telus/other CDMA operators give you in any GSM/UMTS phone as long as it is being used [i]outside[/] CDMA areas. If not (and I don't see any reason why not), then your phone selection will be very limited to the few dual-mode phones that your operator may supply like several BlackBerry phones (namely the 8830 World Edition, Tour 9630, Bold 9650/9670, & Storm 9530/9550) as well as some old Motorolas.

Well, what surprises me more than anything, is how native providers can all offer cheap(ish) plans. For example in the Netherlands you pay about €7 to €15 per month for unlimited Internet, on top of the voice plan. In Canada there is no such luck, the cheapest (and so far, only, also not nation wide yet) unlimited plan is WindMobile with $35/m on top of the voice plan.

However, as soon as roaming begins, you start paying through the nose, as Snidely's quote above shows. With WiFi points growing, and with increasingly improved Edge/3G networks globally, you'd think there would be a breakthrough one day... as already happened with voice plans.

Data has always been treated as different, same as SMS (which is nothing but a tiny blob of data being sent, right? What an easy way to earn $0.10, or while roaming, $0.60 or more!).

Now, with Google Voice popping up, and Skype providing voice over 3G, I wish there was a global provider who saw a market and offered a global data plan - at a USABLE rate :D

Now I'll descend from my soap box :chair: :p

It's not even a tiny blob of data but a part of the control channel like what tells your phone a call is coming in or that you have a new voice-mail! I think SMS was originally made for the engineers of the GSM networks, hence the short length of 160 characters/bytes (limit is due to the size of the control channel).