Prepaid DATA in Spain

[flyfisher]

Originally Posted by drama queen

The stores are in most cities and major towns in mainland Spain. There is a map on their website.

Hipermercados Carrefour

It looks like there might not be a store on Menorca - I think the nearest one might be on Mallorca?

The APN settings were not in the SIM pack. Normally these should be stored on the SIM. Instead the SIM had APN settings for Orange - the network that Carrefour is hosted on. These didn't seem to work - so I simply went into the APN menu on my phone and set up an additional APN for Carrefour. Just add an APN with the following settings - NAME=Carrefour, APN=carrefourinternet.

The SIM is probably designed for use in Carrefour dongles - and these probably automatically set up the APN. I was using the SIM in my phone, so I had to set up the APN manually.

I didn't pay too much attention to the speeds - in general they were good in the cities and towns, and sometimes slower in very rural areas. I was mainly web-browsing, emailing, streaming Google maps and listening to streamed radio sometimes - all of these were fine in all 5 places where I was staying. I also used VOIP and it was mostly ok - sometimes a little choppy - but this is normal when you do VOIP over 3G. Carrefour use Orange's network - so the coverage and speeds are probably the same as Orange.

100MBytes per day is the cap on downloading. I never went above 40MBytes any day - so 100MBytes was fine for me. Every day that you use the Internet, €1 will be deducted from your credit. The minimum top-up seems to be €5, although they asked me to put in €10 when I bought the SIM. Hence the cost works out at €1 per day, but the minimum that you can initially buy is 10 days.

Let me know if you have any other questions.

Many thanks. It looks as though I will have to ask around to see if i know any friends who are off to mainland Spain. I think I have one contact who may be able to help. 4 last questions I hope and thanks so far!!

1) How long does the credit last for?
2)Is there a monthly 'maintenance charge?
3)How long does an unused SIM stay active for??
4)How can you 'top up' - hopefully not just via the shops.

Many thanks

[drama queen]

Originally Posted by flyfisher

Many thanks. It looks as though I will have to ask around to see if i know any friends who are off to mainland Spain. I think I have one contact who may be able to help. 4 last questions I hope and thanks so far!!

1) How long does the credit last for?
2)Is there a monthly 'maintenance charge?
3)How long does an unused SIM stay active for??
4)How can you 'top up' - hopefully not just via the shops.

Many thanks

I don't know how long the credit lasts for. The daily tariff plan is not tied to a month (they have another monthly tariff) - so I have no reason to believe that credit will expire at the end of a month. It is essentially a day-pass tariff, and if you don't use the Internet on any particular day it doesn't debit your credit. However, there may be some period of inactivity after which the SIM gets disabled? In most countries this is 6 months to a year. If you have some Spanish, you might be able to find the details in the user manual...

http://www.carrefour.es/telecom/docu...rnet_movil.pdf

They forced me to do a €10 top-up immediately when I bought the SIM - so I suspect that the SIM was active from this time. It didn't bother me, because I needed 10 days of use. However, the credit shouldn't start decrementing until you first access the Internet. Perhaps you could persuade them that you just wanted the SIM and that you would top up at a later stage?

You can top up at any checkout in Carrefour - but they also appear to have an Internet top-up - and perhaps a phone help-line also. I didn't use either of these so I can't be sure how well they work.

Recargas > Carrefour Móvil > Carrefour Telecom

[petkow]

Originally Posted by drama queen

I don't know how long the credit lasts for. The daily tariff plan is not tied to a month (they have another monthly tariff) - so I have no reason to believe that credit will expire at the end of a month. It is essentially a day-pass tariff, and if you don't use the Internet on any particular day it doesn't debit your credit. However, there may be some period of inactivity after which the SIM gets disabled? In most countries this is 6 months to a year.

The most important thing that has been missed in this information is that the SIM has a minimum spend requirement of 3 Euros per month! If you do not meet this, they will debit it from your balance. Therefore if you plan on buying this SIM to use over two holidays, and leave credit on the SIM when you leave, you may find that it is down to zero by the time you are back.

If you can read and understand Spanish, a good resource for prepaid SIM's in Spain is gsmspain.com. For carrefour movil, this page has a lot of information: Foro Carrefour móvil