cheap sim for abroad

pollygo

on talk sport (radio station), they've been promoting a sim card called 'sim4travel' which apparently offers the best rates for when you go on holiday. I'm sure those of you that travel a lot may find it useful.
go to https://www.talksport.net and click on their 'shop'.
I'll be interested to know what you think of the offer,
Polly

redux

Martin mentions it in his roaming article

There are several of these international SIMs now, including ones with Estonian, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Monaco and Isle of Man numbers.

Some of the IoM ones have the cheapest indigenous tariffs, about half the cost of the Liechtenstein ones like sim4travel, and also per second rather than per minute billing and no connect fee.

Also, people calling you will want cheap ways to do so; the IoM numbers seem to be treated by many providers as a UK mobile number, which means cheap calling via 18185 etc.

But as they have variations about which countries they have free roaming in, eg China Japan Mexico, then it is worth studying the coverage of all of them if going further afield than Europe

http://www.prepaidgsm.net/en/international.html

pollygo

wow! that's given me enough to be going on with.
Many thanks,
Polly

ruhere2

Geez if only I lived in the countries that had these cheap tariffs. I would be really interested in the variation one in Japan though.

carl310166

I bought one last year from https://www.0044.co.uk i have since found a link to one here http://www.oneroam.co.uk/sim-cards.aspx?m=1&mi=1&ms=0 but i have not read everything about it yet,cheap though !

redux

0044 have the Isle of Man one, as well as a range of country SIMs. The one at Oneroam is Travelsim, with an Estonian number (they used to have the UM SIM).

ruhere2, you don't need to live in these countries; they are cheap in a wide range of places. For Japan you need an unlocked 3g phone as they don't have GSM, and the 0044 SIM has free incoming calls and outgoing at about 12p per minute

mean_mark

in 9 weeks we are going travelling for 9 months (canada / usa / nz / oz / s e asia / s africa / egypt and want to take 2 phones with us to receive calls from home / call home / locally / each other when we are apart. Sim4travel looks good - is it the best / only one. Any tips welcome. Do we need a quad band phone or is it the sim that is important? At home O2 is the best signal - does this matter.

redux

mean mark, take a look at the Prepaid GSM link in post 2, and follow links from there.

You'll see that each of these SIMs has slightly different coverage of other countries, for example only the IoM ones work in NZ. And none of the global SIMs is cheap to use in USA and Canada, so get a local SIM for each of these - and your quadband will be helpful as the Americas have different frequency bands.

The IoM SIMs may be the most interesting for many countries, as there are cheaper options for calling them from here, and they have a lower tariff.

If you are on O2 at home, then that can help, as it can has a wider range of call forwarding options - eg you can use an 0844 number to divert to the US/Canadian numbers from inclusive minutes, and it can also divert to foreign numbers, but I assume as you will be away that long that your UK contracts will lapse.

You might also look for calling card and callback services for extra cover, for example for calling from landlines. Callback services have a range of different trigger methods - access number, sms, webform etc

mean_mark

the date is getting closer - we set off on our round world trip in 3 weeks so i need to decide quickly which sim card to buy!
have looked at various incl sim4travel but sim4theworld seems OK. Any experience of this co? Real beginner at this so treat me gently:o

twr18

https://www.globalsimcard.co.uk is cheaper than sim4travel

redux

I have both UM and IoM SIMs. Either is fine in many countries, but as I pointed out above, you'll find that UM has no roaming in NZ, and that in USA and Canada it would be much cheaper to use an indigenous SIM. In addition, if Japan or Korea are on your itinerary, you will need to use a different phone - a 3g phone works in Japan, Korea needs checking

The CallKey (IoM) ones are resold by several dealers including sim4theworld and Geodesa mentioned above; it appears that the dealers have discretion on the exact tariff offered, and some are now about on a par with UM and the other global SIMs, but some are still a bit cheaper ...

I bought my CallKey SIM from 0044. They later increased the advertised tariff, but apparently the old tariff still applies to mine, though another member here had a more ambiguous reply. Since then, 0044 are instead selling Callblue, which also has an IoM number, but is said to be separate from CallKey.

Sorry to waffle on so much, but if I were starting now, I'd go for Geodesa on the link in the last post, as their tariffs are a bit cheaper than sim4theworld and some other UK agents. I still use the UM SIM a bit but the other is more useful to people calling you because of the IoM number being treated by cheap call providers as a UK one - eg 2p per minute at weekends on 18185.

And I repeat my remarks about callback and calling cards for extra cover. Callback between 2 landlines eg hotel to home can be as cheap as 2p per minute, or if you have internet access, you could try not only VoIP directly but also the callback from one of the Finarea companies like Voipcheap.com, which could be actually free per minute between landlines or some interesting other tariffs. Other callback services use trigger numbers, text message or wap/gprs; on some, a text can define both the called and destination numbers so a mobile can set up calls between 2 other numbers ...

I hope I haven't made this more confusing - for any more info or explanation, please ask ...