Getting a SIM card and cell phone in Turkey
 

We leave a week from today and our travel plans are in place, thanks to the invaluable advice from all of you! Here's one more question re. cell phones. We always get a local SIM when we travel and use it in our old Nokia, this method has worked in several countries. However, I hear that in Turkey our cell phone needs to be registered, which takes 5 days, this means we won't have a local number for the first half of our stay. Would like you Turkey experts to tell me if this is true, would it be better to just buy a cheap phone once we are in Istanbul? We usually get the SIM at the airport itself, can we buy a cheap there itself? Thanks in advance!

Here ya go: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/europ...im-turkey.html

The answers you seek are there. :D

And here: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trave...im-turkey.html

Thanks sparkchaser, will check out these links. I also have a friend who travels frequently to Turkey on work and may borrow his phone for my trip. Thanks again.

You can buy a SIM card easily at the airport. We did, but it stopped working after 4 - 5 days because we didn't register it (in the hopes that it would work for most of our 10-day trip without registering it).

We just did not bother. I had always been able to use my "dedicated travel" GSM phone until Turkey. After reading everything, and after visiting a lot of tech places in Istanbul, we decided we were just going to depend on WiFi.

So the good news--our WiFi on our smartphones/iPad (set to data off or airplane mode)geared up rather well throughout Turkey. If the signal was good (and actually, except for the time on a gullet, it was QUITE good), we could SKYPE and email really well.

I still would have liked to have had GSM text ability while on a bike ("am in ditch and may need medical help") but since my husband was actually WITH me most of this trip, that ended up not a biggie.

The registration process might be a little strange. In the first 4 days, I have used the SIM card in my phone without any problem. However, at the fifth, I have received the text informing me about the tax payment obligation.

If your stay is like 3-4 days in Turkey, there might be a possibility that you are not caught up :) Also, you can consider one of the mobile pocket rental companies in Turkey like AllDayWifi.com and Verizon Mobile.

Before coming to Turkey, I talked to a friend who visited Turkey 3-4 months ago and he advised me mobile wifi hotspot instead of SIM cards. So I have checked the mobile wifi rental companies on Tripadvisor and decided to rent one from Alldaywifi.com .

I got the parcel at the airport and used in Istanbul and Cappadocia. They also have variety of extra services which you should check if you plan to visit Turkey. Because we had Museum Pass and a transportation card from them and they made our vacation easier.

I think it worths a try for travelers who needs stable WiFi during their trip.

My wife and I were in Istanbul last January. At the Istanbul Ataturk Airport there were 3 stores who sells simcard.
The prices are almost same 80 Turkish Lira for just simcard. But they are overcrowded.
We finally rent a mobile hotspot from iugo gadgets for rent at the arrival terminal.
We paid total of 40 Euros for 7 days. The mobile hotspot had unlimited data.
It was cheap comparing to other simcards..
We dropped the device back to the store before our flight