Best 3g SIM card for Western Europe?

July 12, 2012 9:50 PM

What are my prepaid 3g data+sim options for Western Europe?

I will be in the UK for a week, the Netherlands and Belgium for a fortnight, and then France for a few days. What are my options for prepaid 3g data (including SIM(s))? Telephony is a minor issue, data is most important.

What companies should I be checking out? Are there any which won't require a new SIM per country?

posted by pompomtom to Travel & Transportation (3 answers total)

Best answer: The EU's new roaming regulations and caps help you out a decent amount.

Assuming that you're going to buy a SIM in the UK and load it up with credit, there's something like Vodafone's Data Traveller, which is £2/day -- or £10/month, though you have to ask for it explicitly -- for 25MB of daily data, then 69p/MB. O2 has something similar, though not the monthly option. The hard-to-search-for 3 network also just launched a £5 unlimited day pass, but you have to re-buy it every day. Every big UK mobile carrier either has operations in those other countries, or roaming agreements with local operators.

Overview here.
posted by holgate at 10:50 PM on July 12, 2012

Best answer: As ever, I recommend the excellent Ken's Tech Tips. See especially his page for visitors to the UK and his page about SIMs, which includes a calculator to help you find deals. He's also written recently about 3's 'Euro Internet Pass'. Hope this helps.
posted by davemack at 1:47 AM on July 13, 2012 [2 favorites]

O2 have a new tarrif called O2 Travel for PAYG customers that covers continental Europe. It's a flat fee of £1.99 per day which gives you up to 25mb. (If you go over the 25mb, you can get another 25mb by texting TRAVEL25 to 21300 and it'll deduct another £1.99 from your pre-paid balance.

I was absolutely livid with them because they announced the whole thing literally a day after I got back from a multi-stop trip to Europe where I spent a fuckton on data.
posted by the latin mouse at 10:24 AM on July 16, 2012