Great Cheap Local Sim Card Hunt

tvmick

Country Visited: Germany
Make of Sim: T-Mobile Xtra (Cash and Go)
Cost of Sim: Simpack 20 euro with 10 euro included calls.
Ease to obtain: Longwinded forms to fill out. Need passport as I.D and an address to register to.
Cost of calls: Depends on the tariff you choose
Weblink to the tariff: http://www.t-mobile.de/xtra/1,7206,9316-_,00.html

andy88_2

Germany

Vodafone CallYa - €19.95 with €10 credit valid for initial 15 months,
then €15 will add 9 months or to max total 15 months

bought in a dealer in a small town - he filled in the form online for me in a couple of minutes (it even had UK postcode search ie only house name needed to be added)

3 tariff options - typ calls to Voda and landline 28p/min, other mobile 50p/min
http://www.vodafone.de/callya/preise_tarife/51296.html

other info - 0800 calls are free, but recognised calling cards that do not surcharge may be blocked. I use an Alpha Telecom one to call UK for 13p/min, German landlines for 12p/min, and only use the credit for Vodafone calls (family). I am vaguely looking for a cheaper calling card, but about 10 cannot be accessed.

German networks have traditionally been highly priced, but there is now simyo, an mvno on e-plus which has all German calls at €0.19

Alfie_E

andy88 wrote:

Since return, I've discovered that T-mobile appears to have (I can't translate) a cheaper int'l option by using 33 instead of + or 00 - see tariff page above.

Intercall 33 uses Voice Over IP for the trans-national part of the call. The Czech "half" of Eurotel is still called Eurotel Praha, although that may change now that Telefonica owns the controlling share of its parent company. Eurotel's version is called NetCall *55. (The other half of "inter-net".) You can get the idea of Intercall 33 by reading Eurotel's English NetCall *55 page.

Now, my submission...

Country Visited: Czech Republic
Make of Sim: Oskar. Pre-pay service is called Oskarta.
Cost of Sim: 500Kč (~£12), including 500Kč of call credit.
Ease to obtain: Any Oskar shop. See Oskar's Stores page.

Cost of calls:
Calls to another Oskar mobile: 3.57Kč/min (~8p/min)
Calls to a non-Oskar Czech telephone: 7.14Kč/min (~16p/min)
Calls to the UK: 11.31Kč/min (~26p/min)
SMS to anywhere: 2.38Kč (~5.5p)

Oskarta Tarrif page

Anything else that may be helpful:

• The Oskar store in Václavské náměstí (Wenceslaus Square, centre of Prague) is at the top left, as you face the museum. You might need your passport to buy a SIM card.
• As well as top-up scratch cards ("voucher" / "kupon"), you can top up your account at a good proportion of ATMs. If you have a Nationwide debit card, this is very convenient.
• Oskar have a really great web-based interface for all their accounts, including the pre-pay Oskarta. You can see recent calls and top-ups and make many changes to the setup of your account.
• All aspects of the service come in Czech- and English-language, including the telephone menu and operators, except for the manual and pamphlets that come in a SIM pack.
• Oskar provide a free web-to-SMS gateway to their network. (If you want to enter a UK mobile as a return number, you'll have to remove the leading 7, and enter a country code of +447 instead.)

Oskar were recently bought by Vodafone, so all the above could change at any time.

polyglotuk

andy88 wrote:

German networks have traditionally been highly priced, but there is now simyo, an mvno on e-plus which has all German calls at €0.19

Just to add to this.... I would certainly recommend simyo (http://www.simyo.de). The SIM card (Starterpaket) costs €19.95, including €10 call credit. There's a promotion on giving you an extra €5 credit, but only until 31 July! Be quick!

The SIM card is only available online and they will only deliver to an address in Germany. Had no problems paying with my Nationwide credit card though.

Calls are cheap (for Germany!):

Calls to German mobile networks and German landlines: €0.19
SMS text messages within Germany: €0.14
SMS text messages from Germany to abroad: €0.20

More tariff details here: http://www.simyo.de/de/product/sim102_rates.jsp

As for calling back to the UK, the short answer is don't! Try to find/borrow a landline or use a calling card. Or if you have Internet access, there's always http://www.voipbuster.com

There's no minimum contract with simyo and the credit stays valid for a year. You top up online using a credit card (in units of €10, €25 or €50, or one of your choice). Max credit level is €200. Agaiin, no problem using a UK credit card to do this.

They piggy-back on the E-plus network and coverage can be slightly more variable than with T-Mobile, Vodafone or O2 outside of cities. Check here for coverage (http://eis03sn1.eplus-online.de/evinternet/index.html).

First post - hooray! :j

1connect

Where is the best and cheapest place to get a sim card when in in france?
My plan is to head cor a carrefour and get one there - this may not be my cheapest option.

also do you know...

What is the cost per min to UK
what is the cost per txt msg
how much credit is included

thanks 1 connect

JessicaFishy

Country Visited: Italy
Make of Sim: Omnitel (Vodafone equivalent-same logos etc)
Cost of Sim: cant remember exactly- i think i paid about €14 but that included €5 call time or something
Ease to obtain: Long forms to fill out. Need passport or similar as I.D and an address to register to.
Cost of calls: reasonable- sorry cant remember exactly!

- in Italy - the main networks are Tim, Wind, and Omnitel- but Wind was reputed not to have very good coverage. The bonus of Omnitel was that every now and then they'd 'gift' you with a certain amount of topup, quite randomly. They jsut send a text saying 'you've been given €10 free topup', for example. You can buy sims from the phone shops which are everywhere, and top up cards from newsagents etc.

andy88_2

Alfie - thanks for that about Intercall33; interesting to see if Oskar gets rebranded and whether it will join Voda's Passport scheme

polyglotuk - Welcome! have you used simyo with calling cards?

1connect - details of French networks Orange, SFR and Bouygues at the Prepaid GSM site I mentioned, links for tariffs incl int'l etc - €0.60 to €0.75 to UK. I'd use a callback service with it, as 0800 (calling card) calls are not free
http://www.prepaidgsm.net/en/francia.html

Jessica - those PPGSM guys prefer Wind, and seem to dislike Vodafone! (conversely, it surcharges credit sometimes). Wind also has its own calling card system called Dialoga International.

seaniboy

Anyone know anything about networks in Lybia?

andy88_2

VOX PoP Luxembourg? - not a place where everybody goes, but there is a remarkable offer there at the moment, which I only discovered last night...

http://www.vox.lu/setframedefault.aspx?lang=EN

... as a special offer until 15 September, all incoming roaming calls are free.

This means that anybody using a separate callback service in conjunction with it will receive a calls for free, and may make "outgoing" calls for the callback company's tariff, from about 14p/minute.

The free incoming calls is similar to Riiing of course; whether they intend to compete, and what the roaming charges will be after that is anybody's guess. I'm going to try contacting them - just to be slightly awkward their CS # is a mobile of course, so I'm just figuring a cheap call to there.

andy88_2

seaniboy wrote:

Anyone know anything about networks in Lybia?

no, but
http://www.gsmworld.com/roaming/gsminfo/cou_ly.shtml

http://www.almadar.ly/
http://www.libyana.ly/

I think you're going to need Arabic; the second has an English button, but doesn't work. I hovered the cursor, and read some page names, but even the contac_us only has Arabic on it.