Comments on: Help me txt and call around Europe without breaking the bank.

Question: Help me txt and call around Europe without breaking the bank.

atmosphere — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 08:11:26 -0800

Best Europe wide roaming prepaid sim card?

I am travelling through Europe for an extended period of time and am looking for a prepaid sim card that has decent roaming around Western Europe. I will only be staying in one country for a few weeks max at a time, so buying one for each country I visit isn't very practical, especially because I am travelling on a budget. I'd like mainly to be able to txt other European phones and call European landlines.

I recently purchased an Orange prepaid sim card in France where they told me it would work fine all over Europe, and they told me the fees which I now forget, but which were not bad. However, when I went to Spain, I could no longer call from my phone. I could txt / sms to France, but I could not call to mobiles or landlines in Spain or France. I was fortunate enough to return to France, where at an Orange store I was told they do not offer any roaming services, and that this is why I could not call. It doesn't feel like this is correct, but I don't really know where to go from here. The Orange website is hard to navigate when translated through google.

I am totally willing to buy another sim card, or fix whatever the issue is with my current one, either way thanks for the suggestions and advice hivemind.

By: valkyryn

valkyryn — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 08:25:27 -0800

Yeah, EU common market and all, but the telecommunications industry is still pretty fragmented. You may actually need two or three cards to do what you want. Kind of a pain, but actually pretty common in Europe, where a large percentage of customers--a majority in some countries--are prepaid.

By: departure lounge

departure lounge — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 08:53:55 -0800

For my last multi-country EU trip I used a data SIM from United Mobile, which worked very well. They offer regular voice SIMs too... check out their "rates" map for the cost by country (generally €0.29 for outgoing calls and SMS throughout the EU).

By: BigCalm

BigCalm — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 09:22:33 -0800

A pre-paid one can be tricky in Europe. Generally, a "Vodafone" or "Vodafone-owned" company should be the one to go for, because Vodafone automatically has roaming rates set up for their pre-paid sim cards and have a network in every country. The others can be a bit fragmented - Orange is a good example there.

By: komilnefopa

komilnefopa — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 21:30:23 -0800

I used the Global Riiing card in 2005 and 2006, though it's probably best for receiving calls--their text rates are a bit more. It's also kind of annoying to make calls because you dial, get disconnected, and then have to wait for a ringback. It does cover much of Europe, though.