When we pre-booked Eurostar tickets for our last trip to Europe in 2008 we were given local SIMcards complimentary with our Eurostar tickets. It was great. It meant we knew our European phone number before we left home and could advise friends & family. All we had to do was swap the SIMcards in our own phones sometime on the flight over.

This time we thought we would buy local SIMcards when we arrive in Paris. Once inserted into our phones we could text key friends & family, and they would then have our new numbers to store into their phones.

However we've been bombarded lately with promotions for "roaming SIM cards" like travelSIM and others, which are apparently a card you buy before you leave home but which work anywhere in the world. These too would enable friends & family to know your number before leaving (not that our plan outlined above was in any way difficult). I've always thought of "roaming" as an expensive way to go, but these "global SIMs" claim not to be. Reviews have been confusing: one review said people calling you from the country you're in don't have a number to call (not sure I understand that remark); while another review claimed the only alternative to using a global SIM was to rent a phone plus a card (which contradicts our 2008 experience).

Can anyone offer advice on this? Our main uses for mobile phones when we are overseas is calling or texting each other about where to meet up after separating for half an hour or so (e.g. at a market or while shopping), phoning ahead to a hotel we're booked into that night to let them know if we'll be late arriving, and texting short messages back home (e.g. on a friend's birthday). Except in an emergency, all other or longer communications back home would usually be by email.

Hi Twoflower:

The last few years we have gone both to France and Italy, and have struggled with the same type of question, whether to get two "local" SIMS or a "Global SIM"..

Without question, local SIMS are cheaper.

They have two drawbacks:
1) As you said, you can't give friends & family and essential work people your number before you go.

2) For me, I had trouble as my French is not too good, trying to determine if the French voice said I misdialed a number or if I was running out of minutes -- I had my share of both messages... and running out of minutes at the wrong times caused me some trouble.

With global or european SIM cards, you can buy from a firm that can answer your questions in English, and with many of them, you don not have to buy more or top-off.... you simply use your phone as much as you want to and you see your bill on your credit card when you get back.

In my experience there are two types of muli-country phone cards. the First uses a "call back" technique. When you place a call, it rings in some 3rd country...you hang up and then (with luck) a few seconds later your phone rings: you have a dialtone and you call your number. (I may have the details wrong, but in essence that is what happens). The problem is that you have a possibility of two dropped calls instead of one, and on some of the Blackberry and/other Smart phones there was an incompatibility problem, and callbacks did not work.

The second type, and I think that is what you were referring to, is that they may give you a UK or Isle of Jersey tele. I have used Roam Simple the last few years, and that is what they do. The only confusion is what you alluded to: someone in France who wants to call you back (a landlord when you are trying to meet at the apartment, for example) has to call an out-of-country phone number instead of a local French number.

In my experience, the Europeans are used to calling foreign numbers and it has not been an issue.

So as always there are trade-offs. For me it is worth it to pay more and to have instructions and help in English. For others, local in each country may be the way to go.

Hope this has helped. It IS INDEED, a confusing subject for many, (me included).

Best regards
Steve

Thanks Steve. As you say, it's a confusing topic. That's a good point about the voice instructions being in the local language. The local SIMcard we got in 2008 was a UK one, so it wasn't an issue. I wonder if our French is good enough to cope with it!

If we do opt to buy SIM cards locally, are some better than others? I've been recommended Orange, but don't know what others there might be.

In their prime, like in 2008 or so, there were many really good deals on so called international sim cards E-kit is one and was readillyh aailable on ebay for something like $10 with $10 worth oc redit. For receiving you got two numbers, one for the USA with a +1 country code and the other for the rest of the world with a +44 (UK but really Isle of Man, for example) country code. Incoming calls on the USA number cost 19¢/minute and those on the +44 number were free throughout almost all of Europe west of Russia (although the caller to the +44 number paid a surcharge over his or her carrier's ld rates to the UK of something like 27¢/minute..calls to the +1 number were charged as USA calls, generally today free from mobile phones with country wide roaming. Calling back to North America was something like 48¢/minute with a 35¢ one time set up fee and yes to get these rates you used call back.

Now the eu has gotten in the act. Intra-eu roaming rates, especially for receiving calls, has dropped dramtically, down to something like 0,11€/minute (this is for voice, data rates are coming down too). Calling within the eu is also very reasonable. So if yu get a local sim card in France, say Lebara, not only do you get the free reception of calls while in France and its cheap rates to North America, you can use eu roaming rates if you go on to say either Italy or Britain. The problem is to compensate for all this, once you leave France in this case, you charge for calls to the USA becme astronomical. Hence the advantage of local sims (also it is hard to top up most local sims once you leave that country; vodafone is an exception but Lebara is not). With the e-kit card, you can top up at any time via the net.

It really depends on your pattern of calls. One other point. I do business with a firm called localphone (localphone.com). For $2 set up and 99¢/month, they can give you a local phone number in just about every country in the world and via the net, you can set up a ring to numnber at very reasonable rates for many european telcoms. So in my case, might not be yours, I got a NYC number with area code 212, forward all calls from my home phone number to my cell phone number in the USA and then to the localphone number and voila when I program in say my British cell number, within seconds, mny British cell phone is ringing. That solves the problem of notifying about your number. So you can swap your French sim for an Italian sim, just reset the ring to on local phone and you have the best of all worlds, at least the way I see it.

Again, this is for voice. Data presents different problems although the eu is moving to cut down roamng rates on data also within the eu.

For French sim cards, take a look at Lebara.FR. Some people here have ordered a free sim card or two sent to their USA address and although according to the web site, it should only go to French addresses, I did receive it in the USA with no problem if knowing your French number is important. They can be registered here and topped up on arrival in France say at the many many relay kiosks found in railroad stations.

Lebara also has operators in a number of different languages so if you have to talk to them (to activate the card, for example), there will be no problem. I have used Lebara in Germany (they are international) and they were very inexpensive.

Lavandula

One caveat, though (not to knock lebara).....you can't top up a Lebara FR sim card once you leave France even though there might be a lebara operating in the next country. But sim cards from them are very inexpensive.

I went to Europe in February! Started from Spain from there I headed over to Italy and Switzerland. I ended my Trip in the UK! I used a roaming Sim card which was great!! Its called Tellink roaming Home Page English | Tellink
I bought it online from their website. It always worked fine wherever I was. The best thing about it was the free incoming calls all over Europe!
The Data costs are very high so I didn’t use that!
The Cool thing is i live in New Zealand and I still use it here!!

I always had good experience with local SIM cards and mixed ones - with roaming ones. Several years ago bought GLOBAL SIM from http://www.ekit.com. It worked in some places but not in all. It had UK # registered with some small Isle of Man provider and it was quite expensive to receive calls on that #.

This year tried to order Lebara SIM but it never arrived to my address in Canada so I decided not to get any cards but instead rely on Wind Mobile offer (paid $8 & get 20c calls). That card failed to register in all 4 countries that I visited. My other SIM (Rogers prepaid) registered everywhere but it's costly - $2.50 per minute.

Surprising working alternative was Nettalk mobile app (I am a customer here). It allowed free 50 min worth of calls to Canada or US on wi-fi (charge after 50 min). Call quality was good but it's only can be used for placing calls & not for receiving. Skype on mobile failed miserably (it connected but couldn't hear anything)

I know this is an old(er) thread, but I just wanted to comment on the very last sentence in hkto's post. We used Skype on an iphone from Southeast Asia very successfully.