Comments on: Calling, texting, data for American traveler in Taiwan

Question: Calling, texting, data for American traveler in Taiwan

Korou — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 17:09:28 -0800

I am traveling to Taiwan for about two weeks very soon. I will be there with about 20 fellow students from my university. Being able to communicate amongst us while about Taipei will be pretty important. What do you recommend to use around the city? Inexpensive and easy would be great.

I have an iPhone 5 with AT&T, an iPad, and laptop; also a Skype account and Google Voice. Payphones and calling cards are of course on the table. Calling each other in Taiwan would be top priority, followed by texting and data. Calling home is unimportant.

By: mattoxic

mattoxic — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 18:31:09 -0800

FETNET- have a new deal NT1500 for a month all you can use for internet & voice. Not sure you this would work with a locked iPhone. You could pick up a HTC Wildfire /S while there. Taiwan is the land of HTC. Not sure how much, but cheap.

By: wongcorgi

wongcorgi — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 22:37:32 -0800

Buy cheap prepaid quadband phones. This one is $10 and is easy to unlock.

By: melvinwang

melvinwang — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 22:24:39 -0800

There is an area in the front of the airport where all the major carriers sell SIM cards. At least one of the carriers offered a combined voice and data plan that's good for X days (as of September).

You could put the SIM card into another cheap phone as suggested by wongcorgi if you needed to make calls, and put it in the iPad when you need data. (I assume your iPhone 5 is locked.) I actually ended up using my iPad to do all my calling/texting (via Skype) after buying the SIM anyway because it was easier than constantly swapping devices.

By: Korou

Korou — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 02:32:45 -0800

Here's what ended up happening:

I was able to have my iPhone 5 unlocked using an online service (not AT&T). I purchased a prepaid nano SIM card from myFone, aka Taiwan Mobile—it cost NT$500. Two forms of ID are required; my California driver's license and passport sufficed. Five days of unlimited data was NT$350 and in order to activate data I had to dial a number printed on the inside front cover.