Is the need for an "International" SIM Card ending?

bartolo5 · 19-10-2010, 23:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by petkow

... However, there are plenty of great offers for data on local SIMs which you can pick up cheaply and easily as you travel.

I beg to differ. Unless you plan ahead and do your research about what SIMs to get, what APNs to use and what tariffs are available on prepaid for data it's going to be difficult to get that info once you are on the country because most sales people at the stores have no clue about any of this and of course you won't have internet to research anything because that's what you are trying to get.

I was recently in France, tried to get SFR iPhone prepaid plan, 10 euro for a week of unlimited data (great deal) and getting it to work it was a total ordeal. The SFR store I went did something wrong and didn't activate the plan properly, I tried to add it manually through the phone and their automated service but SFR doesn't accept non french credit cards there (lame). Had to back to the store, have the guy call customer service and they did fix it, but they told me it would take two days for it to start working.. and it did take two days for it to start working. Another major problem was finding what APN to use; the guy at the stored configured every setting of my iPhone by hand from the instructions that he was given on the phone. Still, they configured wrong apn.. after some research on a free wifi hotspot I was able to figure out that the right apn was 'sl2fr' ..

In Italy not too long ago I had a similar story, had to walk a lot through Milan to find a TIM store, and then they didn't speak english so communication to have them add the right plan was shaky. They didn't accept credit cards in the store so I had to run to an ATM to pay them with cash because the store was closing soon.. I had researched the APN and this one just worked right off but the guys at the store had no clue about it.

In the USA there is simply no decent option for prepaid SIM data that I know of.

If you frequently visit a few countries and you've got the hang of what's the situation of prepaid data in each one of them then yes, local SIMs are a great way to go for data, cheap and they work. But what we really need, is some international deal that give good data prices in many countries... I'm putting my hopes on Truphone Local Anywhere SIMs although currently their data rates suck, but they say they are going to improved them soon.