Cheapest sms with an international sim card?

[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.)