Data Roaming
 

Hello dudes!

Im from brazil, and im going to Europe in september.

First country to visit will be Spain, then i will go to france, italy, germany, france again, england and finally holland.

I really need to use DATA (3G or Edge), so i need one sim card with cheap roaming taxes

So, my question is: How can i buy a "pay as you go" sim card to use in Europe?

I need to buy it before i travel to Europe, so delivery to brazil is necessary.

Btw, i know that probably vodafone italy and T-mobile are the best in prices, but i need to know if they delivery it to brazil.

Thanks!

If you're going to several countries you should probably get an international SIM. With international SIMs you're going to get a cheaper rate than if you roamed from one country to another. However, it's still not going to be cheap. As far as getting the SIM before you leave you can contact companies such as Telestial but you will pay a hefty premium for the convenience factor to have the card sent to you. On the prepaidgsm.net site there is a section for international cards. Check there. It would probably be cheaper to get a prepaid SIM in each country rather than use an international SIM. If you get the card within the EU it will likely cost you €10 for the initial SIM plus some starter time.

How much data do you expect to use?

As all the countries you want to visit are included in Vodafone-roaming-packages the three most obvious offers to look into would be:

- Vodafone Italy: €2,50/day for 50MB, €1/MB afterwards (LINK)
- Vodafone Ireland: €2,99/day for 50MB, not sure how much afterwads (LINK)
- Blau Germany: €4,99/week for 50MB, can be bought as frequently as you like (LINK)

With the Vodafone offers your main problem is when you use up the 50MB. Then you get charged the normal rip-off rates ! With Blau you don't have this problem, but the package is a bit more expensive, but it's valid for a whole week.

So you need to think about what amounts of data you are planning to use.

If you get problems with the shipping to Brazil, let me know. We're here to help each other after all :)

Vodafone Ireland have an interesting offer at the moment - free data roaming anywhere in Europe. It is not just restricted to Vodafone countries or networks. This means you can get data throughout Europe for Irish prepaid rate 0.99c per day - up to 50MB and €1 per MB over 50MB. probably the best rates available across Europe at the moment. Minimum online topup is €10 so you can have 500MB over 10 days for €10. Each day you use Internet, credit is decremented by 0.99c

If you combine this with the Meteor Ireland free voice roaming these two Irish SIMs will let you roam Europe with minimum roaming costs. Hard to beat these Irish offers.

I'm not sure I understand this. The rate used to be 99 cents a day, but increased last winter to €2.99 a day, and that's what the website appears to say at the moment. Is there a reduction again, somewhere I can't find?

The 99c rateis for a voice/ SIM that allows up to 50MBdata per day.The 2.99 rate is for a data only SIM intended for dongles.

ttp://www.vodafone.ie/offers/free-data-roaming/

I am using the 99c rate travelling in Europe at the moment-it works fine. You can also get a €20 for 30 days rate - advantage plus.

was just traveling in the UK, Sweden, Norway, and Italy,

for the UK, I like to use an Orange sim card, go for the Camel plan for cheap calls back to the US (or wherever), and you can buy 'extras' for GBP 5 that last a month, eg, 100 mins in the UK, 250 MB in the UK, 30 mins in Western Europe, 4 MB roaming in Europe.

not the cheapest outside the UK, but a one-sim card solution.

I also use an Abroadband data only sim in a We3G mifi wifi gadget, 59 Euro cent a MB, works almost anywhere there is 3G.

happy travels!

Thanks, I hadn't seen that, but no wonder I was confused -

How much does Mobile Internet while abroad cost?

I think I let a SIM lapse - maybe I'll see if they can reactivate

I agree - the Vodafone site is very confusing, and you can be excused for missing the free European data roaming offer.

The free European data roaming appears to have been a spur-of-the-moment response by Vodafone Ireland to Meteor's free voice roaming. There is a price war going on in Ireland at the moment. The Meteor offer came just before the Summer holiday season, and huge numbers of customers have been defecting from market leader Vodafone to challenger Meteor in order to get the free voice roaming. Vodafone reacted quickly but appear not to have fully updated all sections of their website. The economics of the offer seem dubious as someone using the full 50MB per day could cost Vodafone Ireland €750 in regulated European rates while they would only receive €20 revenue. I dont see how they can keep this ip, but the offer is terrific while it lasts.

You assume Vodafone are always paying those € 0.50/MB set by the EU to foreign operators, but this is just a price cap not a fixed price, so operators can still agree lower wholesale prices. Even if they didn't have such agreements Vodafone could limit their customers' roaming ability to their own (or partners') networks like they've recently done for German postpaid customers who subsribe to the "ReiseFlat Data" option, which extends validity for any national data option to 22 countries at the disadvantage of being admitted to only one partner network per country.
Actually I expect such tariffs where roaming is limited to certain partner networks to become standard in the mid-term, at least if you head for the lowest roaming rates. Multinational carriers like Vodafone, T-Mobile and Telefonica will start this race as they can let customers roam in their own networks at almost zero costs and alliances of smaller carriers (like the one between KPN, 3 and Play) will join this race sooner or later, too.