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SIM Card for London, Belgium, France & Italy

SIM Card for London, Belgium, France & Italy

Old May 27th, 2017, 10:22 PM
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SIM Card for London, Belgium, France & Italy

Hi Everyone,

I would like to know if there are any SIM cards available that can be used in London, Belgium, France and Italy?

All I need is few minutes of call, free incoming calls, couple of GBs for the internet.

Thank you in advance!
Unicorne is offline  
Old May 27th, 2017, 11:05 PM
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We have prepaid SIM cards in France (SFR is what I buy) and in Belgium (I just bought a BASE) which corresponds to your need.

No idea in Italy.

Please note that you must register - at least in Belgium - and in France they wanted my credit card number, so pay attention when you buy a prepaid that you can register where you buy it.
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Old May 27th, 2017, 11:43 PM
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Calling the US on a European SIM will be expensive.

You can buy a SIM in the first country you arrive in which will cover all of Europe without roaming charges. The problem will be topping it up if you need to. Not all phone companies allow online topping up or accept foreign credit cards.
I believe 3 does in the UK and VodafoneNL does in the Netherlands but Vodafone SIMs from other countries may not allow it.
There are numerous threads on here about SIMS and which is best.
Note that as Wo says many countries now require you to register you SIM, as an anti terrorism measure.
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Old May 28th, 2017, 12:04 AM
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Three UK might work , but the data size choices might not work for you. I bought a SIM for use next week in Netherlands, France and UK and have it running and roaming here in the US. It roams everywhere you might want to go. But it will cost you about $20 for 1 gig or $30 for 12 gig.

http://www.fodors.com/community/euro...damsterdam.cfm

Check it out at the end of this thread.
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Old May 28th, 2017, 03:03 AM
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You listed London first so I assume you will be travelling there first. Most any British sim card you purchase will roam in the other countries as of 15 June; at least as far as data, calls within Europe and texts are concerned. British sim cards when bought in the UK require no registration and are free but you have to top up. Topping up a British sim card while in Britain is easy. You can go into most any convenience, grocery store, petrol (gasoline) station and top up at the till with any credit card the merchant takes or do it at a mobile phone store; the largest being Carphone Warehouse. They may even have clerks very knowledgeable who can explain the different plans and might actually advise you of what's best for you. Or you can research on the web sites of the big UK telecoms (o2.co.uk, Vodafone.co.uk, three.co.uk, ee.co.uk). They all have similar plans for a 10 or 20 quid top up. Data? Three gives you 12 gb of data for a 30 day period for £20. Calls to the UK and texts are included. Other calls within Europe cost a few pences supplementary to that. Vodafone UK has a plan too or you can get 500 mb of data free with a top up. Can't go through all the plans here but again as you're starting in London, go into carphone warehouse and they will probably be able to give you the best advice.

For the most part today, you will get free reception of calls no matter whre they originate from while in Europe on any of the British sims. The only hangup and where you need work arounds is calling outside Europe once you leave Britain. My Vodafone UK sim card from a couple of years ago is still active and I can call from within Britain the USA and Canada for 2p/minute just by signing up for their free international plan. I have had to come up, though, with ingenious way of making cheap calls to North America when outside the UK. That requires some research.
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Old May 28th, 2017, 03:11 AM
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I'm not into google voice or google hangups. They're probably easy to use but I'm not a geek. But I discovered a company that will give me a calling card (they are going the way of the travelers cheque, remember them, these days) that is triggered with a local UK number. So from anywhere in Europe, I call that number. It comes out of my UK alloweance and make the call for something like 1.9 ¢/minute.
Of course, it would be far simpler for me to use my tmobile sim card which features unlimited texts, calls to and from for 20¢/minute (it's paying to receive calls that irks me). The problem is they throttle data to 2g speeds and want extra high speed data which is why local European sims are still necessary. You may find looking at your own carrier's international options while a tad more costly will meet your needs.
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Old May 28th, 2017, 04:27 AM
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"I'm not into google voice or google hangups."

Google Hangouts, though sometimes it is hangups...

I know you can do it, based on all the workarounds you have already done.
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Old May 28th, 2017, 05:56 AM
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In the thread rs899 linked to above, I mentioned the Vodafone Dutch SIM I bought. I have since used it on my trip to France and Italy, and it worked like a charm. I'm not sure it's the cheapest or best solution for everyone, but I highly recommend it because it worked. I bought the SIM on eBay (today would be $7.50 USD shipped) and activated it in the US before I left for Europe and never even visited the Netherlands. I had a working phone the minute I landed in Venice. No need to register the SIM in the Netherlands with a passport (as you would have to do in France and Italy). I was able to add credit to the SIM (which came with 0 credit on it) using my US credit card on Vodafone's website.

I topped up (added credit of) 20 Euros to my Vodafone account, then bought a "You" package for 3GB of data for a month for 20 Euros. I wound up using only 2GB in 17 days in Europe, and by the last few days I wasn't even putting the phone on WiFi anymore because I had so much data leftover. Sometimes a hotel's WiFi wasn't so great and the phone as a hotspot was faster and more reliable.

Downside: although data roaming is free in Europe with Vodafone NL, calls to numbers outside the Netherlands are billed at 20 Euro cents per minute (from your Vodafone credit, not a credit card). Texts to non-Netherlands numbers are billed at 15 Euro cents per text. But incoming calls and texts are free. You can give your Dutch phone number to people in Europe who may need to reach you. I didn't make a single call or send a single text to a European number while in Europe so not an issue for me. I only needed the data, and I made lots of free phone calls to the US with Google Hangouts, which is about as difficult to use as Gmail is for email. Being able to call Delta airlines US 800 number for free when my flight was delayed 5 hours was really helpful. (You do have to remember to put a "+1" in front of US phone numbers to call from Hangouts, though.)

If you need to make only a few short calls to numbers outside the Netherlands, I guess 20 Euro cents per minute isn't horrible. You do need enough credit on your Vodafone account to do so, and you can add it only in 10 Euro increments. You can make calls to Europe using Google Hangouts too, but they aren't free - maybe cheaper than 20 Euros cents per minute, but you again have to buy Google credit in increments of $10 USD.
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Old May 28th, 2017, 06:06 AM
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Not to take anything away from the Dutch Vodaphone deal, but it is worth mentioning again that some countries are harder to get service activated in.

My upcoming trip is mostly in France and I was tempted to get a Free (Free is the stupid name of the company, and they aren't, but they are cheap) SIM, but it seems that you can't just walk in and get activated on the spot there, nor in Italy.

But UK service ( and Dutch) is very easy to get started. No bureaucratic snafus.

Except trying to pay from overseas with a non-UK credit card. But that can be overcome by using a third party topup service.
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Old May 28th, 2017, 06:51 AM
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ttt
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Old May 28th, 2017, 10:57 AM
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In Italy, you need to bring your passport along, and it has to be photocopied, but apart from that, you can get activated on the spot. I was in Rome's Termini station two weeks ago, and, since we had an hour to kill before our train, I decided to go into the TIM store to try to get an option removed from my plan that I had been unable to remove on their website. Everyone in front of me in the queue was buying SIM cards and getting them activated on the spot.

They say your SIM card will be activated within 48 hours, but that's just CYA.
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