Prepaid phones with data in Malaysia/Borneo

March 8, 2010 4:01 AM

Prepaid phones with data in Malaysia/Borneo

I'm travelling to Malaysia and Borneo next week and am looking for suggestions of prepaid mobile phone providers and plans that offer prepaid and 3G or even 2G data plans to use on my iPhone while I'm there.

We're going to spend a fair bit of time in Malaysian Borneo, specifically Sabah. It would make travelling very easy if we can get a mobile with data to use on my unlocked iPhone.

Any help would be fantastic. Thanks in advance! :)

posted by snarkle to travel & transportation around Malaysia (3 answers total)

I think Hotlink has some prepaid mobile data plans that are pretty good - for Peninsula Malaysia, at least. Come to think of it I'm not 100% sure if it's also available in East Malaysia.
posted by Xany at 4:32 AM on March 8, 2010

These are the five GSM/GPRS/EDGE operators in Malaysia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telekom_Malaysia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celcom_Berhad

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxis_Communications

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DiGi_Telecommunications

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U_Mobile

In my experience developing nations like Malaysia do better with phone service than US carriers, you should be able to pay cash for a prepaid SIM card and load it with (about $25/month) "unlimited" GPRS data service from a point of sale kiosk, and be finished in 15 minutes...
posted by thewalrus at 4:49 AM on March 8, 2010

Thanks for the help everyone :)
posted by snarkle at 11:01 PM on March 8, 2010