I've got a few associates that will be traveling throughout Europe for a month. One has an SMT5600, which will only do 850/1800/1900. The other has no GSM phone yet, but could take a spare SMT5600.
How well will they be covered with just the 1800 band?
What's the most economical and sensible way for Americans to get Euro SIM cards? Do they need one for each country/area? Or for regions? Or one for all of Europe?
I cannot speak for all European countries, but in Holland, Belgium, France, Germany and Switzerland GSM 1800 is very reliable. Almost all new European telco's use the 1800 band, every country should have one or more providers that give good coverage in the 1800 band, like Telfort, Orange and T-Mobile in Holland. It is certainly the cheapest to buy a pre-paid sim for every country, since roaming charges are absurdly high. The down-side to so many sims is that you have to change them with every border you cross and you have a different number in each country...
Thanks, that's very useful info.
What's a typical cost on pre-paid SIM cards out there? In the US, the per-minute charges for pre-paid are pretty high. And what's the cost like for calls to the US? Astronimical? Reasonable?
As far as I can tell the T-Mobile German website has prepaid sims starting at 20 EUR. It looks like each minute of T-Mobile to T-Mobile calling or T-Mobile to German landline will cost about 0.50 EUR. I couldn't find the prices for inter-network or international calls.
As for the prices and calling costs for prepaid SIM's I can only speak for Holland. Typically, a Sim card with 15 euro worth of calling costs about 20 euro's, sometimes when on sale they cost only the amount you get with it, e.g. 15 euro's for a 15 euro credit. At the moment T-Mobile Netherlands (GSM 1800) sells pre-paid SIMs with 15 euro's credit for 9,95!
Calling costs about 35 cents per minute in Holland with a pre-paid SIM. There are three choices: Always the same costs. Whenever and whoever you call in Holland, you pay 35 cents per minute.
- Different costs: In peak hours 40 cents to anyone, in off-peak hours 20 cents to mobile, 10 cents to landlines.
- After three: peak hours 45 cents, after 15.00 you pay 20 cents to anyone, either mobile or landline.
Calling to the USA ( incl Hawaii and Alaska) is terribly expensive, with pre-paid you pay 75 cts per minute to either mobile or landline, with a start tarif of 7 cents.
Calling with a Dutch T-Mobile Pre-paid SIM in Western Europe and the USA costs between 0.95 and 1.10 euro's, depending on your roaming network. Calling in the rest of Europe costs 1.95 per minute.
As you see, roaming charges and itnernational calls are very expensive, therefor I woudl recommend to buy a different SIM for each country.
Related
Hey All,
Found out the below from Orange UK Customer services on pricing for PAYG data charges...
£4 a MB!?!?!
I suggest if you're going to use GPRS on an Orange PAYG SIM, buy the Orange World Access 4 add-on package as follows:
1. Orange World Access 4 provides 4 megabytes GPRS (general Internet) or 160 minutes CSD access to Orange World for £4.
2. You have one calendar month from application to your account in which to use your GPRS or CSD allowance. Any GPRS or CSD use over the allowance set out above will be charged at your standard rate.
3. Orange World Access Daily can only be used in the UK. Any GPRS or CSD use outside of the UK will be charged at the relevant current international rates.
4. The Orange Extras terms and conditions also apply. These should be viewed at www.orange.co.uk or a copy is available from your local Orange shop.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Here is the Email from Orange Customer Services:
Thank you for your mail.
I can confirm that pay as you go GPRS is charged at £4 per megabyte.
The following information gives an approximate example of costs as a
guide:
1 page word document = 20-30 kb's = 7.8p - 11.7p
1 WAP Page = 600-900 bytes = 0.23p -0.34p
1 average website homepage = 34kb = 13.26p
I trust this will be of assistance.
Kind regards
Michele
Orange Customer Services
Query: Dear Sir/Madam,
Please could you let me know what the cost is for GPRS data, using a
PAYG connection. By this, I mean the costs of using it casually and not
part of a data bundle. Thank you.
T-mobile PAYG ftw...
got t-mobiles website at least the uk one will send you 2 free payg sim cards.
put a fivers worth of credit on at ya local corner shop. and there you go one squid a day maximum.. no more whatever ever. Surf away.
For me and all my friends this is far cheaper than any of the subscribtion services.
Edit/Addition from here>>
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/08/20/three_cheapo_data_plans/
Mobile operator 3 is set to offer budget mobile data to UK punters. According to reports, three new tariffs will see it match the most attractive offerings from T-Mobile, starting from £10 a month. That's the same price that Demon set when it launched its pioneering consumer dial-up internet offering, back in 1993.
At £10 a month, the basic Mobile Broadband package ("Light") gets you 1GB of data, while £15 gets you 3GB, and £25 up to 7GB. Data usage outside these buckets is charged at 10p/MB. 3 will throw in a free USB modem to existing customers, or £29 if you sign up for eighteen months.
By comparison, T-Mobile's Web'n'walk Plus deal, which today offers the best value, permits 3GB for £24.68 (inc. VAT) and 10GB for £37.45 - which means that the "Plus" and "Max" offerings from 3 work out at a lower minimum price per MB. Vodafone offers 3GB for £25 per month, and a curious deal where you get £8.50 for 500MB in a 24-hour period.
It leaves the other two UK operators competing for the dunce's cap. O2 and Orange both offer 1GB for £45 a month. We're excluding plans with a cap in the megabytes, such as Orange's 160MB for £20 a month.
3 will offer the service with five HSDPA handsets, but using the phone as a modem won't incur the wrath of the data cops, as it does with some other networks.
3 told us today that "our pricing has not yet been released and the prices you quote are inaccurate at present
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So if
A) your phone can take the 3network sim cards - iirc my hermes cant for some reason.
B) The deal comes out true.. sounds a bargain to me
As a casual mobile surfer.. I guess on average I use t'internet 3 or so times a week while mobile.. which on average costs me around 1 pint in real money. never reaches any limit restrictions.. havent abused it, but have taken advantage of youtube, google maps, ebay etc frequently.. so for just over a tenner a month you cant go wrong.
Some sick new deals from Tmobile UK. what you guys think bout it? I have already changed my tariff and I have kept my £10 loyalty discount till the end of my contract in June. For some reason though they wouldnt give me the Flext Refresh 35 so I opted for the next one up Flext Refresh 40. Its only 3 months to the end of my contract and I,ll twist their arms a likkle then.
http://www.t-mobile.co.uk/services/uk/flext-refresh/
example
Flext 35, now £180 of allowance.
Voicemail 20p p/m
International Calling to landlines 40p p/m
International calling to mobiles £1 p/m
International texts / mms 20p p/m
Certain 08 and 05 numbers will be charged at 40p per minute.
WnW 1GB
No calls to 0871
Only half of allowance can be used to make calls to 08 and international numbers
Hi All,
What is the best Pay as you go sim card deal in the UK? I just need a UK sim card for three weeks. I'm looking for the lowest upfront fee and then cheapest minutes. If it had some data capabilities that'd be good.
Cheers!
Asda mobile is cheap for calls 8p per min and 20p per meg for data the sim card cost 50p in asda stores.But if you use alot of data virgin have unlimited data (well 25mb) for 30p a day but the calls cos 15p per min.
If you know someone under 25, get them to get you a blyk simcard. They give you £15 credit a month without you ever even topping up, and all they do is send you a couple of advertising texts a month.
Only disadvantage is its not 3g
T-Mobile had one of the best PAYG data rates, think it was £2.50 for 5 days and sort of unlimited. Been contract for a while now so not sure if it's still current.
i was bored and was looking aroudn t-mobile uk and vodafone uk.
i found out that pretty much all their phones are free on contract (awesome)
and wireless plans are cheap as heck 60usd gets you 800 min, unlimited texts and internet 60 gets you half that here, if even (heck, it would cost you 35 bucks just to addon unlimited internet and texts)
but now heres where im perplexed, in the us we have unlimited nights and weekends on pretty much all plans and all networks, as well as in-network calling for free.
does that also exist in the uk and europe?
t-mobile used to have those evenings and weekends plans but they don't offer those anymore. Not too sure about Vodafone though.
Free evenings/weekend calls aren't as common on contracts as they used to be, partly due I guess to the increasing headline figure. It is however a releatively common perk on the pay-as-you-go circuit. Top up £x per month, and get free evening and weekend calls.
I can see the logic to it if you assume business users are predominantly on contracts and consumers on PAYG. The business user won't need his work phone out of hours (much), so no point offering unlimited off-peak when you don't have to, and will have their own phone for personal use anyway (part of why there are more mobiles than adults!). The home user is (hopefully!) engaged with work/school during the day, so makes few calls during this period, and if they're a heavy user off-peak, get that as a perk each month when they top up £x.
Also worth bearing in mind with any cross-ocean comparisons is "caller and recipient pay" there vs "caller only" pays here, so assuming an even split of incoming/outgoing calls, 100 minutes in the UK will get you as far as 200 minutes would in the US.
I get unlimited land-line calls on my orange contract - which means that my 800 minutes a month goes very far because only mobile phones come out of that pot.
I am looking for cheap unlimited global roaming sim card options
I have found a couple of options -
There is an option from TMobile but its limited to 128kbps and I found it awfully slow on roaming.
https://www.t-mobile.com/support/plans-features/data-speeds
There is also from China Mobile but I found pricing to be around Hong Kong Dollar $398 - https://www.hk.chinamobile.com/en/corporate_information/Service_Plans/
This one throttles speed to about 384 kbps.
I know Sprint also offers roaming but they only support a limited number of handsets and is quite pricey - https://www.sprint.com/en/shop/services/global-roaming.html
There is also a plan from 3HongKong that covers North America and Europe pretty well for about US $25 - https://web.three.com.hk/prepaid/travellerssim/index-en.html
I was wondering if there are more options that people have tried out that are cheap. I think ideally I would want 5-10GB 3G speeds (minimum)