Quote:
Originally Posted by markus
As a frequent traveler and mobile enthusiast I decided to write down some personal experiences of using prepaid cards in certain Eastern and Central European countries.
Poland
Compared to small Baltic markets, Poland's prepaid scene is very active. Lot's of different products and many products have also different plans. I have used Play for calls/SMSes and iPlus Simdata for GPRS/3G. Both work well and talking time is easily available almost everywhere. Simdata is hard to find except official dealer (major shopping centers and city centers). English is not widely spoken in Poland so don't be surprised if nobody speaks English at the dealers. I used Simdata with great success while driving in Poland, I used it often for 3 hours in moving car without getting disconnected. International SMSes worked with Play to those networks I tried except one UK network, must check which one it was. Play offers bonus for incoming calls. Sad thing with Poland is expensive international SMSes. Play numbers seems to start with either 790 or 791 (+ 6 numbers).
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Simdata is quite a nice product, however, as you noticed, not so easy to buy. Some kind of alternative is similar "data SIM" Orange Free with the same data rates. In fact, any Orange prepaid SIM can be converted into Orange Free but it may last up to 24 hrs whereas Simplus can't become Simdata and vice versa
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As to English not-speaking people - English is not a mandatory foreign language in Polish schools (as Russian was until 1989/90) though it's the most popular one, of course. However, many people simply forget what they learnt in school - no matter what language or any other subject
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Play has relatively very few roaming agreements that's why it has many proble with international SMS interchange.
Play bonus for incoming calls is possible because they are allowed to get a much higher termination rate than the "Big Three" and it's usually more expesinve to call Play than other +48 mobiles.
The rate for international SMS are horrible here - and MVNOs set them even higher than "Big Three"
Quote:
Originally Posted by markus
Roaming
Even the first GSM call was made in Finland, prepaid products were long expensive and limited by features. Roaming was only available for postpaid users. I have been bit surprised to notice that every prepaid I have bought from other countries lately have had roaming function activated, at least incoming calls and SMSes have worked. It's also nice to notice that many prepaids in Baltic states offer free incoming calls in all of those 3 countries.
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Prepaid roaming isn't that simple after all because of necessity of "watching" the balance in the home country.
BTW, Polish iPlus simdata doesn't have roaming - if it worked for you, it's was malfunction
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