PrePaidGSM.net Forum (Archived) - View Single Post - Greece HSPA (prepaid and postpaid offers)

jgp · 28-06-2011, 15:42

This thread was very helpful so I wanted to thank everyone for all of the provided information. Also, I thought I would share my experience. I just returned from Greece yesterday. I went into the Cosmote store that was in walking distance of the Plaka area of Athens to purchase a data only sim. The sales person I spoke with tried to tell me the data only sim (20 €) would not work in phones and that I needed to buy the USB stick so it would work with a laptop. I ignored her and attempted to buy the SIM anyways but even after reading this thread before going to Greece I had left my passport in the hotel so it was a no go. Went back in the store later that day and the next guy I talked to did not hassle me at all. He just wanted to know if I wanted the small sim for iphone or the standard size. I got the standard size and they activated it right there in the store.

As mentioned in previous threads when you purchase the 20 € you get 20 € of credit that you can spend buying different combinations of data and duration. I went with the 10 days / 3GB combo; it gets 15 € off your credit and you still have 5 € so if you run out of data you can top it with the extra 5 € and you'll get 1 GB more.

Don't forget you need an unlocked phone. I was using a Samsung Captivate Android phone from AT&T so prior to going to Greece I had to root and unlock it which is a very simple process that can be found on the internet. It is also easy to undo.

I had no problems getting to the website and purchasing the 15 € plan from my phone. I book marked the page in my phone so I could check my data usage throughout the trip.

Once up and running I didn't have many issues. There were a couple of times where I would lose the data signal because of poor coverage (mostly on our way to smaller towns to visit family) but the data would not come back online once I was in a very good coverage area. I found I could correct this by turning off the data communication on my phone and then restarting it. This was rare and the coverage was very good throughout my trip.

My wife's phone was an iphone with the latest updates so the jailbreak/unlocking was not readily available for her phone so the data only sim for her phone was not an option.

The nice thing about the rooted/unlocked Android phone is I could then use the 3rd party "Wireless Tether" android app that allows my phone to look like a wifi router and tether multiple devices to it and all share the same data connection. During our trip we tethered my wife's iphone, our ipad and my laptop to my android phone over the same Data only Sim.

For voice we used Skype over the data connection. This worked great and we had no problems whatsoever. Of course you can then make Skype to Skype calls for free but we also loaded our Skype account up with $10 and made daily calls back to landline/Cellular lines in the US and to local Greece numbers for only $0.023 per minute. We ended up using $2.50 in Skype dollars and used less than 1 GB of data throughout the trip. We could have purchased an inbound number from skype so people could have called us but we just didn’t feel like it was necessary. We could call our cellphones numbers back at home and check messages pretty easily so it just wasn’t needed but it is an option. Having Data and being able to use Google Maps was huge help throughout our trip as well as keeping up with email and surfing the internet.

The one thing I failed to realize prior to my trip was that I would not be able to stream any of the copyrighted material from the US while in Greece. For example, I thought it would be nice to stream a Netflix movie for the kids during one of our layovers or driving trips but Netflix, Hulu, streaming sports (ESPN3, etc), and other copyrighted material will recognize from the DNS servers that you are not in the US and prohibit the content from streaming. Sometimes this can be worked around by using VPN connections so it appears as though it is coming from a domain in the US but since the data was all flowing through the Cosmote network there was no quick and easy way around this even when using my work VPN or some of the Free VPN solutions via my laptop. It is possible but it requires a level of hacking in the Android phone that I just wasn’t comfortable with. I sure would have liked to have watched the end of the US Open the first couple of nights we were in Greece when I couldn’t sleep. If you really need access to US copyrighted content while overseas you really need to go the route of sling box but we actually found none of us really needed the US content and it was nice having a break from TV.

Thanks again for everyone’s help in this thread.

	(#188)
jgp (Offline) Junior Member Newbie Posts: 1 Join Date: 28 Jun 2011 Country:	28-06-2011, 15:42 This thread was very helpful so I wanted to thank everyone for all of the provided information. Also, I thought I would share my experience. I just returned from Greece yesterday. I went into the Cosmote store that was in walking distance of the Plaka area of Athens to purchase a data only sim. The sales person I spoke with tried to tell me the data only sim (20 €) would not work in phones and that I needed to buy the USB stick so it would work with a laptop. I ignored her and attempted to buy the SIM anyways but even after reading this thread before going to Greece I had left my passport in the hotel so it was a no go. Went back in the store later that day and the next guy I talked to did not hassle me at all. He just wanted to know if I wanted the small sim for iphone or the standard size. I got the standard size and they activated it right there in the store. As mentioned in previous threads when you purchase the 20 € you get 20 € of credit that you can spend buying different combinations of data and duration. I went with the 10 days / 3GB combo; it gets 15 € off your credit and you still have 5 € so if you run out of data you can top it with the extra 5 € and you'll get 1 GB more. Don't forget you need an unlocked phone. I was using a Samsung Captivate Android phone from AT&T so prior to going to Greece I had to root and unlock it which is a very simple process that can be found on the internet. It is also easy to undo. I had no problems getting to the website and purchasing the 15 € plan from my phone. I book marked the page in my phone so I could check my data usage throughout the trip. Once up and running I didn't have many issues. There were a couple of times where I would lose the data signal because of poor coverage (mostly on our way to smaller towns to visit family) but the data would not come back online once I was in a very good coverage area. I found I could correct this by turning off the data communication on my phone and then restarting it. This was rare and the coverage was very good throughout my trip. My wife's phone was an iphone with the latest updates so the jailbreak/unlocking was not readily available for her phone so the data only sim for her phone was not an option. The nice thing about the rooted/unlocked Android phone is I could then use the 3rd party "Wireless Tether" android app that allows my phone to look like a wifi router and tether multiple devices to it and all share the same data connection. During our trip we tethered my wife's iphone, our ipad and my laptop to my android phone over the same Data only Sim. For voice we used Skype over the data connection. This worked great and we had no problems whatsoever. Of course you can then make Skype to Skype calls for free but we also loaded our Skype account up with $10 and made daily calls back to landline/Cellular lines in the US and to local Greece numbers for only $0.023 per minute. We ended up using $2.50 in Skype dollars and used less than 1 GB of data throughout the trip. We could have purchased an inbound number from skype so people could have called us but we just didn’t feel like it was necessary. We could call our cellphones numbers back at home and check messages pretty easily so it just wasn’t needed but it is an option. Having Data and being able to use Google Maps was huge help throughout our trip as well as keeping up with email and surfing the internet. The one thing I failed to realize prior to my trip was that I would not be able to stream any of the copyrighted material from the US while in Greece. For example, I thought it would be nice to stream a Netflix movie for the kids during one of our layovers or driving trips but Netflix, Hulu, streaming sports (ESPN3, etc), and other copyrighted material will recognize from the DNS servers that you are not in the US and prohibit the content from streaming. Sometimes this can be worked around by using VPN connections so it appears as though it is coming from a domain in the US but since the data was all flowing through the Cosmote network there was no quick and easy way around this even when using my work VPN or some of the Free VPN solutions via my laptop. It is possible but it requires a level of hacking in the Android phone that I just wasn’t comfortable with. I sure would have liked to have watched the end of the US Open the first couple of nights we were in Greece when I couldn’t sleep. If you really need access to US copyrighted content while overseas you really need to go the route of sling box but we actually found none of us really needed the US content and it was nice having a break from TV. Thanks again for everyone’s help in this thread.