Sim phone cards
 

Traveling to Europe in April. Interested in knowing if anyone has experienced using esim on their iPhone? Having trouble figuring out a sim that will work in more than one country. It sounds like vodaphone may do that. There are other’s we’ve seen that are not part of a cellular service. We would need them to work in the Netherlands,Belgium, France, Italy.

Which is your first country? Likely best to see what's available in that country.

Vodafone Italia has a tourist package (physical sim) that works around Europe and even outside of it but if it's your last stop not much point.

The Netherlands is our first stop, we will be staying in Leiden which does have a Vodafone store. Italy will be last stop. Was it the Dolce Vita plan you were referring to?

Or buy a Lebara sim or some such for your trip

We're traveling to France for 2 months beginning in April, and I have looked into esims as a way to use one phone but have 2 numbers, my US number and a local (French) number. My carrier is T-Mobile. Unfortunately, T-Mobile's esim is not available for my phone, an iPhone 8. If I had an iPhone 11 or higher, I think, I could use an esim for my US number and buy a simcard when I arrive in France. As you seem to be traveling to several countries, you would probably need to buy a simcard for more than one country. Don't believe that vodaphone can be used in all the countries you named. I've read that some phones take two esims, but, again, I don't think there is a "universal" esim for Europe. As I'm still researching my options, I'm interested in what others can add.

Vodafone and KPN do not support prepaid eSims, only subscription services.
Simyo, which is an online only service seems to offer prepaid eSims, but I have no idea how you would order one from abroad, nor how you would add balance.
You could try contacting https://www.esim-nederland.nl/sim-only-prepaid via https://www.esim-nederland.nl/contact and see if he can help.
Simyo uses KPN in the Netherlands but elsewhere it will be whatever has the strongest signal (in theory).

You can buy a normal prepaid Sim, which will work throughout the EU with no roaming charges.
Vodafone offers a normal prepaid sim thhat you can add money to with a credit card.
https://www.vodafone.nl/abonnement/prepaid/en

I am not clear on the logic here. Why would a SIM, purchased in the EU, not work everywhere else in the EU? The EU has compatibility laws and not only will the SIM function, rates for data and fixed line calls are the same throughout the EU. Calls to mobile phones may have upcharges, something to check.

Effectively, the SIM should work everywhere in the world, call cost being the undetermined factor.

This may be out of date, but our pre-paid sim cards purchased in Portugal in 2019 did not work outside Portugal.

From what I read on another thread and according to my flip phone instructions, one can use WiFi in Europe and a sim card is not necessary but probably more convenient.

Prepaid sim cards bought in Europe work in all the EU (and I think EEA/Schengen) at no extra cost. They did in 2019 as well. There is a fair use policy when roaming so you can't use a ton of data in another country, but you can use data and call with no extra charges. The main problem as I said up-thread is loading more money on them if you don't have a local bank account. Vodafone NL allow credit cards which is pretty unusual.
You do not need a different sim for each country unless you are in a non EU country. Even then some companies allow free roaming in some countries.
Some UK providers no longer offer free roaming despite their promise to keep it after Brexit, but so far most EU providers still allow free roaming in the UK.

The Ukrainian refugees arriving in Poland are receiving free Lycomobile SIM cards with lots of free minutes. Lycomobile is extremely present in France as well. They won't give it to you free, but they might be worth checking out if only to support what they are doing in Poland.

Here is the EU website that explains roaming in more detail than you will probably need:
https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizen...s/index_en.htm

Vodafone is an expensive option if you are a casual user and just buy a SIM, I've had that experience in Germany. (DIsclaimer: I also have a Vodafone subscription in my home country and nowadays use their $5/day roaming which is cost effective for me). Try Lebara, as I know people in the past have been able to order a Lebara SIM from France, and I have used them in Germany very successfully. Lebara is everywhere now so if your first stop is NL then get it sent to your hotel. I've put a link to the NL site below. The SIM is free and it's ultra cheap to use. There are also English-speaking operators so if you have a problem you can speak to someone easily.

https://mobile.lebara.com/nl/en/prepaid

Roaming and credit cards should be no problem, I have done both of those with Lebara.

Good luck!

Prepaid sim cards bought in Europe work in all the EU (and I think EEA/Schengen) at no extra cost. They did in 2019 as well.

That was not my experience, but there may be a misunderstanding. There were 5€ cards (two for the price of one) for a fixed number of minutes. When I tried using the cards in France, the cards were declared "invalid" regardless of the service provider.

That's the one but each local Vodafone has it's own offers. Vodafone Spain used to offer a nice tourist package but it hasn't been for sale since before Covid.


EU roaming rules don't apply to tourist offers. Nothing stops a carrier only offering service in one country.

A week at $5 will be more than most countries tourist offers for the month. All three of the Italian companies offer tourist packages for €25 that provide a month of service.

Difficult to address this comment without further information. SIMs must be registered with the provider before they can be used and, to my knowledge, this typically must be done on the provider's network. If a SIM has not been registered with the provider, the user will indeed receive an invalid message.

Once you have established service, you should be able to make calls from anywhere. I have used Lebara SIMS purchased and registered in France, to originate calls from the USA and as far away as from Japan.

Thank you for all your responses. Looked at some of the options but many seemed to be only data. What I’m really after is an e sim that would accommodate data as well as calling throughout Europe.

They were activated in Portugal. But that activation was not transportable beyond Portugal's borders.

You probably purchased some promotional deal that was only good on the provider's own network. 2 SIMs for 5€ plus talk time is probably well below the market rate.

With regard to supporting Ukraine all Dutch telecom providers are giving free calls to Ukraine numbers, mobile or fixed.

I know people on the forum have successfully purchased and used Vodafone sims from the Netherlands in other European countries. They are PAYG so you just top up your limit from your creditcard. They may even work with Apple Pay nowadays, I don't know.

Does your own provider not offer a package for Europe?

Oh and though they quote data sims are not data only, it's just hardly anyone actually uses them as phones any more.

>> “Oh and though they quote data sims are not data only, it's just hardly anyone actually uses them as phones any more.”

I used to ask for a data SIM when travelling to South Africa until I found out there was no such thing. The “data SIMs” also include voice calls.