Cheapest sms with an international sim card?

[andy]

Originally Posted by kctopitz

I'm assuming this is O2 UK. For everyone's reference, they charge £3/Megabyte within the EU and £6/MB worldwide (O2 roaming page here). [...] Either way, it sounds like this is the cheapest option for low usage data roaming in Europe.

3 UK is also £3/MB in Europe and several other countries including USA

but T-mobile UK cut its rates a couple of months ago to £1.50/MB

and I think someone on here has recently mentioned similar rates with other networks (T-mobile Germany?)

[Dubrock]

Well I know that it's interesting enough to buy a 02 uk card and have some credit from fishtext, there are enough countries where it works. Maybe it works for some of the countries as well where it's said there is no 3G but where nothing is written about gprs, when not I can always buy a local prepaid or use one of my international cards. The countries where it where it works according to the site of 02 already saves me enough.

[kctopitz]

Originally Posted by andy

3 UK is also £3/MB in Europe and several other countries including USA and Japan

but T-mobile UK cut its rates a couple of months ago to £1.50/MB

and I think someone on here has recently mentioned similar rates with other networks (T-mobile Germany?)

For 3 UK prepaid, it's £3 in the EU, but not all of Europe. They have no roaming in Norway, for instance. Japan is not covered (maybe you were looking at the post-paid, Andy?) and neither are quite a few major spots: Mexico, Canada, New Zealand, and it looks like they're missing all of South America and a lot of Asia. Some places where they do have coverage don't have data access (i.e. India).

It is a good deal for data roaming in the US, which is a worthy point since getting a prepaid SIM in the US isn't as easy as it is elsewhere in the world, and the only ones that do data are AT&T ($ 0.01/KB) or T-Mobile (with a $1/day Sidekick package).

As for T-Mobile UK, £1.50/MB is a great deal for roaming the EU (again, not including Norway) but everywhere outside the EU is £7.50/MB. I suppose that's only slightly worse than £6/MB when you're talking about using only a few KB of data. Their coverage list is pretty extensive, with multiple partners in a lot of countries. No coverage in Nepal. No GPRS in Bolivia. (Random checks, those two.)