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-   -   3 month mobile/data sim card (https://www.fodors.com/community/europe/3-month-mobile-data-sim-card-993541/)

macktec Sep 30th, 2013 11:24 PM

3 month mobile/data sim card
 
I am traveling to multiple European Countries and am hoping cell phones have gotten a little easier out there (I'm coming from the US).

Last time all outbound calls had a connection fee + your minutes fee with the prepaid, is this the same?
Are there any Month by Month phone services instead of prepaid?
Any cheap option of an actual data plan (not with wifi) ?

Im taking a Galaxy s4 and plan on swapping sim cards and using wifi but hoping there's other options

I have read a lot of the other forums but they are usually either for 2 or 3 countries or for a short period of time, so im hoping to get a little of a direct answer to my questions

ribeirasacra Oct 1st, 2013 12:09 AM

There are roaming fees. So if you purchase a SIM card in country one, when you enter country 2 the cost of calls will go up because you are using it outside of country one.
You need to give some details of which counties you are visiting.
Here are some online reading suggestions:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europea...ng_regulations
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roaming
http://www.sloweurope.com/travel/pla...comparison.php

macktec Oct 2nd, 2013 12:31 PM

Denmark
Holland
German
Italy
Spain
Hungry
Switzerland
Austria
France
Belgium
UK
Croatia

greg Oct 2nd, 2013 08:43 PM

I use prepaid in US and elsewhere. I only pay minutes. Whether one bothers to get local SIMs depends on your usage model which you have not posted. If I use less than 10min in a country, I just use roam using whichever SIM I have at hand that allow roaming. My US sim allows roaming as Spanish, Italian, and Lidl (Germany) sims. Hiwever I cannot roam using Drei sim from Aus or a German SIM from blau.com. If I need to uae mobile internet, I need to get a local SIM. If you are a US postpaid user, an int data pkg is a good option for low internet usage.

ribeirasacra Oct 2nd, 2013 10:53 PM

Around 5 days in each county. That is a lot of countries. and a lot of changing phone number in two months. Maybe look for hotels with free WIFI, save loosing time running to a phone shop.

ribeirasacra Oct 2nd, 2013 10:55 PM

sorry maths all wrong I thought it was just 2 months. make that 7.5 days still not much.

DebitNM Oct 3rd, 2013 05:32 AM

Can your Galaxy S 4 be unlocked? If not, the rest is moot.

azzure Oct 7th, 2013 01:22 PM

I get a US number on Skype and use it to make calls when I have wi-fi.

Shraddha Oct 7th, 2013 01:29 PM

After a lot of hunting and researching, we figured that the most reasonable option for our 3 month travel is to buy individual country SIMs. However, as UK was our first destination we bought a 3 UK sim (a prepaid plan called 3-2-1) and found that it's actually quite reasonable for rest of EU due to controls on roaming charges. It costs a max of 24.5p/min to call, 7.1p/min to receive a call, 7.8p to send SMS and 45.8p/MB to use the internet.

So I'd either buy individual SIMs or buy a SIM from a country with many options like UK or Germany.


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