Cheap data roaming: Article discussion

Aaron

koru wrote: »

There's a UK mobile company called Vectone which also has operations in several other European countries

I took three sims and two unlocked phones with me to the US because I didn't want to waste precious holiday time in "wireless stores" getting a local sim, but I wanted to keep in touch with home. I also had a small problem in that I've just moved (timing!) and so the specialist roaming sim providers that want to ship to your credit card address didn't want to know me.

The three sims I took were:

1. my usual contract sim. It's OK, but has poor roaming packages, so would get expensive if I used it much. This has been in the older phone during the trip, mainly so I can get incoming calls and texts to it.

2. a T-Mobile PAYG SIM, got in store and topped up with £15 (so free data next month back home in the UK) which I've used to buy a £10 10Mb Internet Travel Booster for checking email and instant messages when I don't have easy wifi (which turned out to be about half the trip, actually - it's still not very common or cheap outside a few big cities). This has been in the newer phone during the trip and has worked pretty well. Why is this non-EU Internet Travel Booster not in the main article? Also, bizarrely, it looks like picture messages are 30p from this, cheaper than texts at 40p. Calls are still an eyewatering £1.20/min, so I wanted another way to call, which brings me to...

3. a Vectone Mobile SIM, bought in a newsagents and topped up with a £5 voucher. I knew reviews were somewhat mixed, but I figured the claimed 1p/min incoming and 13p/min outgoing (via service message) was worth an attempt. I've tried this in both phones: the older phone searches for a signal forever, regardless of "Vectone Services Roaming Mode" option selected; the newer phone keeps detecting a new SIM card over and over again and won't register on any network. Vectone don't answer their customer services web forms (see other threads on this forum) so I hope I can use up the £5 when back in the UK, but I don't really care too much if not! I resent the wasted time fiddling with phones a bit, so I would advise others not to try Vectone.

malcolmffc

Tip for the USA - get a T-Mobile USA sim card and sign up to their PAYG plan. Then top up and switch to the $2 a day plan from the phone (for some reason they don't let you sign up to this directly if you're not a US resident.) This gives you unlimited data on EDGE speeds every day, which are solid if not spectacular. You only pay the $2 on days you actually use the phone (though in America, "using" includes recieving a phone call or text message.)

mrcamp

I can confirm that you do NOT need to be s US citizen to sign up for any plan on TMobile. As long as you have enough money on your sim to vover the plan, You can add whatever plan you desire. You can do it via your phone, in a TMobile store, or on the web.

Gollom

Off to USA soon for 14 days and after reading the many threads on here my mind is now full! Will someone please take pity on me and tell me the best way to use my phone... Help The Aged!

I have an HTC Incredible S (Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE 850/900/1800/1900 MHz) and want a plan for international texts and data - I reckon 500MB would be more than enough data. Ability to tether would be fantastic but not essential. Not bothered about voice as we will text the number of wherever we are staying and they will call us (calls to USA from my home phone are free)

What is my best bet?

P.S. Calls to USA mobile numbers from my home are also free. Would that apply to any SIM we got? I ask as someone said they charge for receiving calls in the USA?

Many thanks

NFH

Gollom wrote: »

P.S. Calls to USA mobile numbers from my home are also free. Would that apply to any SIM we got? I ask as someone said they charge for receiving calls in the USA?

Yes, all US networks charge for receiving calls, but you can do this on a fixed periodic cost, e.g. $1 per day, instead of paying for each call. See http://prepaid-phones.t-mobile.com/pay-by-the-day-cell-phone-plans

mrcamp

The US does not differentiate between mobile and land lines. So it costs the same to call both. And it's usually very cheap to call the US
from other countries, because the receiver pays to receive the call.

Gollom

NFH wrote: »

Yes, all US networks charge for receiving calls, but you can do this on a fixed periodic cost, e.g. $1 per day, instead of paying for each call. See http://prepaid-phones.t-mobile.com/pay-by-the-day-cell-phone-plans

Thanks for this.

If I read t-mobile correctly, my phone wil not work for data on their network anyway

Anybody know of cheap dongles/data plans? (NY, Orlando and Washington DC

NFH

Gollom wrote: »

If I read t-mobile correctly, my phone wil not work for data on their network anyway

You can use 2G data. As I said above, only some very obscure phones (mainly sold in the US) support T-Mobile USA's weird implementation of 3G/4G, which splits the downstream and upstream between 1700MHz and 2100MHz. T-Mobile are working to fix this incompatibility towards the end of this year in order to attract US iPhone users; they will support 3G/4G on conventional frequencies like the rest of the world and AT&T.

buglawton

In Switzerland Edge 2g seems to work as well as 3g does in the UK, especially in remote areas. That is a country where 3g is only available in Cities but I cannot remember such good 2g ever in the UK.

Gollom

Found a great ebay seller who can provide a good value USA data service and he communicates very well.

Beware of the T-mobile SIM for data - I discovered that it only works at 3g/4g on phones that support 1700 which I believe does not cover a lot of HTC phones. It does work in these but just at 2g speeds which a lot of ebay vendors only tell you when pushed. Of course, you only discover this when you are on holiday!....

Mark has provided a Net-10 SIM which runs at 3g speed and costs £7.50 including post plus a 30 day top-up giving unlimited data and international calls (does not support international text for some reason) for £49

Seller is thepartypoint2010

If I have broken rules posting anything in this message please remove the offending piece!