Pre-paid SIM cards in Europe

[HardieBoys]

Heading off to Europe in June/July: Rome, Spain and Denmark. Can anyone recommend a Europe-wide SIM card, or is it better to buy a Telefónica card for Spain, and use Optus global roaming for the other two shorter stays. Any advice would be welcome.

[johnsmith]

Originally Posted by HardieBoys

Heading off to Europe in June/July: Rome, Spain and Denmark. Can anyone recommend a Europe-wide SIM card, or is it better to buy a Telefónica card for Spain, and use Optus global roaming for the other two shorter stays. Any advice would be welcome.

It depends how many calls or text messages you are going to be making and how long you are away. This website sells sim cards for most countries. I would maybe buy a pre-paid sim card for the country that you will spend most of the time to keep the global roaming charges as low as possible, just make sure that the pre-paid sim card can be used for global roaming, most of them can, but some do not. When I travel to the UK I buy a pre-paid sim card for my mobile from Mobile World and it only costs me 6p (15c) per minute to make a call to Australia, but these can not be used in any other country.


http://www.textbay.net/sims/UK/index.php

http://www.carphonemobileworld.co.uk...gben-home-Home

[dvmcl54]

I had an excellent experience with vRoam check it out on www.vroam.com.au

[serfty]

When O/S, I can communicate at relatively low cost with SMS. I have a business mobile a/c with Telstra and by using "webnotes" on the telstra.com web site from anywhere in the world, I can send text messages anywhere for 25¢ each.

Not the absolute cheapest probably, but very convenient.

[NM]

Originally Posted by serfty

When O/S, I can communicate at relatively low cost with SMS. I have a business mobile a/c with Telstra and by using "webnotes" on the telstra.com web site from anywhere in the world, I can send text messages anywhere for 25¢ each.

Not the absolute cheapest probably, but very convenient.

I do similar. I also divert all inbound calls to messagebank and receive an SMS message when someone has left me a message. Then I use an optus Calling Card to retreive my messages using any landline (free call from most countries and very good call rates).

The main downside for my method, and the benefit of having a local SIM is that people calling me from that country need to call Australia - but that deters them from calling and I get very few calls (good for me, may be bad for others depending on the business etc). The downside of a local SIM is that you have a new and temporary number.

[willyroo]

A calling card is a great suggestion.

The T-Mobile prepaid service works very well in Europe also.

If you use your Australian mobile overseas, Telstra has a good function to get messages - type 101 SND - and the Messagebank will call your 'phone to deliver the messages.

[Lazy Emu]

I have a SIM from Vodafone Netherlands.

I believe call costs are as follows:
On a Vodafone passport network, incoming calls received cost,
99 euro cents untimed. Outgoing calls to same country destinations
on my current tariff cost 99 euro cents + 35 euro cents/min.

For calls within the Netherlands calls are 35 euro cents/min.
When calling to Vodafone or fixed numbers, you pay no more than the
3 minute charge for calls up to 60 minutes.

You might check if Vodafone in any country you are visiting offers a similar deal. You may possibly get a a better deal on a SIM pack by visiting a Vodafone shop rather than an other dealer. The one I bought from the shop offered a registration credit of 10 euros -- if it was available elsewhere no one else told me.

If anyone is interested in buying or borrowing my SIM drop me a line.
It has 25 euros credit on it and expires at the end of October.

If you don't read Dutch, you can find out more about it by accessing
http://vodafone.nl via a translation engine such as http://babelfish.altavista.com

[spa]

hi guys,

i'm new here and have been trying to research this for a couple of days now.
has anyone else been to europe recently and used a pre paid sim to call Australia?

any advice greatly appreciated...!!

chloe.

[busykate]

I have used the prepaid Globalsim simcards from vRoam. Our company uses their postpaid service. The same prepaid can be used in around 100 countries so no need to swap. vRoam Global

[spa]

thanks for the suggestion!

any idea if this can be used to call mobiles in Australia from Europe?

the site doesn't seem to specify.....