Simyo Spain €5/month data (upto 500MB)

[petkow]

Originally Posted by seal

i catched up englis speaking agent after many many calls. And he told me that tarif with 1,2eur/day is only for mobile use not computers. If they suspect they throttle bandwidth. For computer is new tarif 3eur/day/100m. Very disapointing! He didnt know if i change tarif. Advised me to buy new sim with proper tarif. :/

Yes... this is all as suspected, and that is why I recommended going to a 'Phone House' to pick up a new SIM. I don't understand why they cannot 'convert' the older cards into HSDPA accesible cards, but if you look at their online shop: https://tienda.yoigo.com, you will see that they sell the 2 types of SIM's as 2 distinct products! Anyhow, as you are leaving tommorow, there is no use buying a new one at 20 euros.

Just goes to show that Yoigo is no longer the product that it once was. Their voice rates and minimum consumption are also not that competitive anymore. It served me well for over a year, and it is time to move onto a new product... and that is what this thread is about!

There are places in Barcelona you can pick up free WiFI and also plenty of FON spots if you are subscribed to that! Good luck, and sorry you had a bad experience.

[seal]

today yoigo works fine. I disabled instant messengers and only traffic from-to-my pc is smtp/pop3/http/https... so they dont throttled me maybe they do it if see "strange" traffic? that can be easliy done by netflow monitors...

[inquisitor]

You mean Yoigo throttles bandwidth when subscribers use intstant messaging? That would be really nasty!

[seal]

im only suspect. IM uses not standard ports. i mede the test - at 23.oo opened IM, VPN (IPSEC) and at 23.30 throttled me... after 00:00 speed returned to normal

[Billbo]

Anyone know where I can buy a simyo card online? I've tried ebay and googled too but nothing. Someone somewhere must be selling them for a profit?

[petkow]

Originally Posted by Billbo

Anyone know where I can buy a simyo card online?

Why not try simyo.es

No, but seriously I think you will find it hard getting such Spanish registered SIM's from 3rd party vendors online. You do get them from dodgy roadside vendors here though I've been told. Probably stolen ones!

[petkow]

I often get asked the same questions about sporadic internet useage in Spain by PM. As I was replying to one of these today, I realised it would be more sensible to post the answer in the public forum! In any case, others who are more qualified can refine my explanations, especially when it is about generic stuff like how to reflash a 3G modem etc.

Firstly, the question was asked if once a dongle is configured for use in one country it can be used with another SIM elswhere. My answer was:

You will be able to use your 3G Modem dongle back in the UK after setting it up for Spain. In any case to be able to use the UK dongle in Spain in the first place, you will need to "reflash" the device. What this means is that you need to go to the dongle manufacturers website, download the generic software and replace whatever software that came preinstalled on the device with this. If this all sounds too technical, there are places on the web which explain it step by step.

You will then need to manually configure the APN (acess point name), username and password for the service you intend to use in Spain and also for the one in the UK as a separate profile. It's actually easier than it all sounds, as any one provider (e.g. o2, Vodafone, T Mobile etc.) uses just one common username, password and APN.

Prepaidgsm.net user Inquisitor maintains a Wiki on everthing to do with 3G Modems. He also has much more experience and knowledge with how to set these up. His wiki is at: 3G modem wiki Home - 3G modem wiki

Secondly, I had been asked advice on prepaid data plans and on what the catch is with Simyo.

You could consider any of the following:
Yoigo
Simyo Data plan
Blau Bimgo
Masmovil

Masmovil has an English language website, and English speaking customer service. Depending on how little you may use it, they do data at 3c/MB. The Blau deal is 21,50 Euros a month but only for the months you use it.

Personally I use an o2 UK Modem with a Simyo card in it. This is cheapest as it works out at 5 Euros a month.

Generally, Simyo is the cheapest prepaid data plan, but the limit is 500MB per month! For most innocent web browsing this is actually plenty. After this you get charged at 9c per MB, which is not exactly bad either!

The biggest problem with Simyo is that you cannot buy it in a shop. You have to buy it online (here) and get it posted to you in Spain, and you have to be phsically there to receive the package.

Also, they are a low cost provider and their customer service centre is slow and appaling, should you ever have any problems. Think of them as the Ryanair of the mobile phone world.

I personally haven't had any significant problems, but another user has PM'd me about problems relating to porting numbers onto their network, slow communications and a very late refund. Also their customer service centre does not speak English, unlike masmovil.es or in some rare cases Yoigo!

[guitareth]

Must admit my own experience with Simyo was very bad. Signed up including porting of number from HitsMobile.es. They took my money and then advised me after a few days that they could not port my number from Hits as they aren't a Spanish provider!!?? They then failed to respond to several emails and it took ages to get my payment refunded

I then tried MasMovil, who incidentally had no problem porting my number from Hits, and their customer service has been excellent, plus it was very useful to me that most of website is available in English and they have English speaking customer service available, who will phone you back if not available when you call. Been with MasMovil a few weeks now and very happy with their coverage and costs

[petkow]

Thanks guitareth for the feedback!

I must admit it was me who so convincingly recommended Simyo to guitareth in the first place! As I said, they really are a bit like Ryanair or even Betamax. When all is going well, it does exactly what it says on the tin! However, when things go wrong, forget about any Customer Service!

[pete_l]

Although it might be a bit late to add to this topic, here goes anyway (I only found this forum the other day - after I had "discovered" simyo and their €5 offer).
On the basis of their website ad. and a small amount of unqualified chatter on some ex-pat forums about Simyo, I decided to try it out. So far I've been using a Vodafone PAYG 3G connection, which costs €60 and gives 1GB of transfer.
I opted for the Tarifa Movil Diaria (solo Tarifa diaria). I.e. I didn't buy the modem

• First of all, you can only order this on the internet. You create an account at www.simyo.esTelefonía móvil sin ataduras, tarifas bajas, móviles libres e internet móvil and add your details. it will ask you for a passport number or NIE number (if you don't know what an NIE is - you haven't got one )
• Once you have an account you can buy the SIM. There are two options "prepago" (prepay) or contract. At first I tried to apply for a contract SIM. However for this you need a spanish bank account number and a credit card number. For some reason I could not get it to accept an english CC number with a spanish bank account, nor with my english bank account.
  Because of that, I ended up getting a prepay account. This only needs a credit card and my english one was good enough.
• Also you need a spanish address for this to be delivered to.
• Second, you need to be there to sign for the package when it arrives. I ordered mine on thursday and the postman drove over to my house on saturday morning to deliver it, get a signature and to write down my passport number
• The cost was €4.95 which was the delivery cost and I got €5 free credit to the account
• You need an unlocked phone to put the SIm in - even if you're only planning to use data (see later). The reason is that to register the SIM you have to make an initial call, or send a SMS from a phone using the SIM. Once that's done you ca use the data option.
• Here's the killer. The data link is GPRS only. Not 3G: just modem speeds of 3 or 4 kByte/second. Simyo never tell you this and it's not at all obvious from the stuff they send you. One small giveaway is that you have to set the APN to gprs-service.com
• I have had no luck whatsoever in using this SIM in either an unlocked ZTE-MF627 USB dongle (that I got for "3" data services in the UK), nor with my Vodafone dongle - either as it stood, or after I had upgraded / unocked it.
  The ZTE just plain croaks and the E220 spits the message:
  USIM/SIM card does not exist or is unavailable
  On closer inspection, it turns out that the Simyo SIM only has 6 "pads" on it, compared to the 8 on my 3G data and voice-phone SIMs
• Right now and for the foreseeable future the SIM is in my old Motorola V220 GPRS phone, tethered to my PC via USB and using Motorola's phone tools to manage the connection. My assumption is that if yo buy the Simyo modem (for €69 ) you get precisely that: a modem that connects to your computer, not a 3G dongle.

So, is it worth it? Well, for €5 a month I get 500MB of transfer (uploads + downloads totalled together) at low speed. The documentation, in spanish, seems to imply that a prepay lasts for 6 months, though I'll tell you more in 6 months time . Compare this with Vodafone.es's €60 for 1GB which only lasts for 3 months - but can be many, many times faster. Provided the link doesn't drop to 2G - which happens frequently out here in the boonies. I can also pull the phone off my PC and use it to make voice calls and SMS's, so it's bit more versatile than just a 3G dongle and means you don't need another SIM for making calls.
My one concern is over this €0.99 per day maximum / €5 per month thing. Looking at my online account for yesterday it shows

Fecha Hora Duración kB Bloques Coste
05-Dec-2009 23:59:29 864 seg 4269 kB 18 0.44€
05-Dec-2009 22:51:30 4,080 seg 11488 kB 46 0€
05-Dec-2009 16:58:25 12,535 seg 49956 kB 196 1.15€

which is obviously more than €0.99