EU roaming data SIM

[wolfbln]

Hi. I'm one of many contributors of the WIKI prepaidwithdata.
There we are frequently updating prepaid data options for every country.

After the EU price cap on roaming data was lowered to 0.20 EUR per MB, I was looking around for good inter-EU data options. But still there are very hard to find.

The basic idea is a really European one: Why not take a SIM card from any country which has very low roaming rates and use it as data card in Europe. For a data SIM the number or origin is not so important as for voice or text.

As I'm a frequent traveller annoyed with the 30 something national SIMs I have already bought, I sucessfully tested two SIMs in the last months.

The Mundo SIM of Orange Spain with the Go Europe option and a Three UK SIM with the Feel at Home option.

See my article: http://prepaidwithdata.wikia.com/wiki/European_Union

I'd appreciate if this forum can give more suggestions for other SIMs too. The Mundo SIM I actually discovered thanks to this thread here: http://www.prepaidgsm.net/forum/showthread.php?t=8459

Btw. has anybody got any idea how to break this "geo-lock" of Three UK with top-ups? Is there a way to top up Three UK SIMs without being in Britain or having UK-issued credit card for people "overseas"? Neteller, Entropay, UK-prepaid gift cards? Or are there only these shady agencies charging 20% surcharge?

[andy]

Originally Posted by wolfbln

I'd appreciate if this forum can give more suggestions for other SIMs too.

O2 UK: £1.99 a day for 50 MB

T-mobile UK: £1 for 20 MB for 24 hours (or £3 for 100 MB)

Meteor Ireland: €0.99 for 50 MB a day

Orange Spain: €1 for 100 MB a day

Alditalk Germany: €4.99 for 150 MB for a week

Lidl Germany: €4.99 for 150 MB for a week

Base Belgium: €15 for 500 MB for a month (offer during July and August)

[peterdoo]

Originally Posted by wolfbln

The Mundo SIM of Orange Spain with the Go Europe option and a Three UK SIM with the Feel at Home option.

See my article: http://prepaidwithdata.wikia.com/wiki/European_Union

◾having a Spanish-issued credit card: Then you can top up online worldwide on Recargas in the Client’s area and probably understand Spanish. Foreign-issued credit cards are not accepted here.

Very nice guide! As far as online recharge is concerned, I regularly top-up using my German VISA on the Orange.es web page without any problem. It has Verifyed by VISA functionality enabled. www.recarga.com, tusaldo.com and topup.orange.com/ are alternative possibilities. Some of them require Spanish IP which should not be a problem using Orange Mundo SIM as Data card to access the top-up page.

There are two more offers that might be interesting for some users:
Vodafone Italy: 500 MB + 25/25 minutes/day @ 3 EUR (47 countries)
Simobil Slovenia: 500 MB+1000 minutes+1000 SMS/day @ 2,99 EUR (EU/EEA)
http://www.prepaidgsm.net/forum/arch...hp/t-8467.html
http://www.prepaidgsm.net/forum/showthread.php?t=8472

[wolfbln]

Thanks @Andy and @peterdoo for your suggestions.

Most of the offers Andy mentioned are more expensive than domestic data and most have a catch, so I need to revise my rules

UK-cards: It's practically impossible to top up an UK SIM card from abroad without an UK-registered credit card, only top-up vouchers go, but are not available abroad. That's a big problem not entering the country for foreigners. Very dubious agencies charge you 20% extra.

German Cards: Germany is not so restrictive about top-ups and credit cards, but the Aldi and Lidl offers are very exclusively sold at their supermarket stores. You hardly find them on ebay.de or other platforms to be shipped abroad. Dealers wont sell them like independent SIMs (e.g. Lyca or Lebara) and private persons only when not yet registered.

Thanks to Peterdoo, I read your comments on Telefon-Treff too:

I will revise the strict rule about spanish credit cards only to top up Orange on their site to a more flexible statement about some international cards too.

With Vodafone Italy and their very interesting offer I don't see any way to get them out of Italy or to be sent from Italy without a "Code fiscali" registration. So you must go to Italy physically first. There used to be the distribution via the "Europasim" clone, but this has been closed. Are there any distributors left? With them, top-ups are not a problem with PalPal on the VF Italy site.

For Simobil from Slovenia which really looks good too: No registration, no restrictions. Only a small brand. Has anyone already made it to have a Simpl SIM sent from Slovenia, enable the "Tarifa EU NESKONČNO" from abroad (= is the activation SMS accepted out of a roaming network?). What are the top-up choices? How long stays the SIM alive?

Sorry for my curiosity, guys. But I don't like to post SIMs which are not verified by users. And the telcos put up a lot of hurdles just to buy any European SIM card, use it for roaming and recharge it again.

Still, we have a long way to go in Europe....

[wolfbln]

Thanks to your help I updated the site:
//prepaidwithdata.wikia.com/wiki/European_Union

I hope that we will have more offers soon. But no company came out with new offers when the new data cap of the EU took effect. They are still very strong in "preventing" the use of their products out of their home markets but still making the extra money for EU roaming from their loyal customers.

This whole roaming situation is a good example how "Europe" still sucks As a good European I hope for the better collecting SIM cards in the meantime.

[sleepy]

And also TIM Italy has the "TIM in Viaggio Pass" offer, slightly different from that of Vodafone IT. The preference depends on individual needs:

http://www.tim.it/estero/tim-in-viaggio-pass

10 Euro
7 days
500 Mb
125 minutes calls in
125 minutes calls out
250 SMSs
APN: wap.tim.it

Vodafone caters for brief stays and allows more data and calls each (calendar!) day at a slightly higher daily cost.

TIM gives a lower average daily allowance but lasts a week (it should be a real week, but from very recent personal experience I would say that is more like a calendar week, whatever they might telly at the call centre or you can read on their site) and if resources are managed wisely, switching to wifi when available, it can end up being cheaper and more convenient to use.
I managed to stay well in the limits by using this strategy.

In theory no tethering or PC connections.
In practice, at this very moment it works with no problems, until any limits gets really enforced.

I have no definite choice here. I use both options depending on what I am going to do and how long I stay abroad. It is an individual choice to be made.

Warning: switch off the "TIM in Viaggio Full" option which is automatically activated every time with the "TIM in Viaggio Pass" option, in order not to get "ripped off" in case you go beyond the allowance.

Sleepy

[peterdoo]

Not prepaid and only for business customers with minimum 5 lines, however it shows, how the market is developing and that there still is a huge margin for lower tariffs from the other operators:

Orange Spain now offers a tariff with:
1000 minutes (the sum of in+out) in the EU/EEA+Switzerland+USA+China to all these countries per month.
1GB (incl. 4G where available) in the EU/EEA+Switzerland+USA+China per month.
29,25€+VAT per month.

There are more minutes and GB available inside Spain, however I am not mentioning that as we focus on roaming here.

http://www.orange.es/descubre/empres...OMO_CODE=23001

[Stu]

Peter,

With respect to Orange.ES, my concern would be what happens when the SIM is rarely used in the home country. Many companies have a fair use test based on this. For example, TMobile USA has throttled in 100 countries, but if your SIM isn't used in the US primarily they pull the plug. I had a Canadian friend who bluffed them into giving him a contract SIM (which paid for) and only used it on his foreign travels (switching it off in Canada). After 60 days, TMobile pulled the plug.

[tothjeno]

There are more ways to get data roaming at relatively fair price with Hungarian SIM cards also:

1. Buy a T-Mobile prepaid card and top it up. You need to register for a SIM in the huge stores, gas stations etc. (cards bought there will not work without activation) but you can go to smaller GSM shops in Budapest (the ones sell second-hand phones as well) and can ask for an activated prepaid SIM card. Some of the sellers are really nice and surprisingly have some of those activated cards on stock.

Activate roaming:
*104#

After that you can use the Travel and surf option (send the text "+SURFS" or "+SURFM" or +"SURFL" to the 1430 number)
You can use the +36 30 3444 888 number from abroad instead of 1430 also.

For your information: 1€ = appr. 300 HUF

Data roaming plans:
Travel & Surf S: 690 HUF/10MB data in EU (+Norwegia, Iceland, Andorra and Liechtenstein)

Travel & Surf M: 1490 HUF/50MB data in EU (+Norwegia, Iceland, Andorra and Liechtenstein)

Travel & Surf L: 6990HUF/250MB data in EU (+Norwegia, Iceland, Andorra and Liechtenstein)

Travel & Surf works for 100 countries anyway, not only in the EU.

If you want to call T-Mobile Hungary in English:
Call 1777 and press 9 for English

If you want to use data in Hungary read this:
http://www.t-mobile.hu/english/mobilinternet

[wolfbln]

Now, as we need to realize that we are going to see roaming charges for the rest of our lives in Europe, I again reworked the WIKI section on EU roaming SIM cards.

Some of the feedback of the users here was incorporated. I'd appreciate your comments here or there:
http://prepaid-data-sim-card.wikia.c...European_Union