Best voice+SMS GSM carrier for one month of travel in Europe?

August 11, 2009 7:30 AM

What is the best flat calling rate pan-European GSM SIM card for temporary use? Two people with iPhone 2G (iPhone1,1) quad band unlocked phones will be in Europe for one month. We want voice and SMS only, not GPRS data, and the ability to add credit to either phone by scratch cards...

From around August 20th to September 20th I'm going to be in western Europe with my wife. Our area of travel will primarily be Germany, the Netherlands, France, and Italy.

We both have unlocked iPhone 2G (first generation) phones, pwned with pwnagetool... There's no doubt the phones are unlocked as they have been successfully used for voice+SMS service with GSM carriers in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

We would like to buy a pair of SIM cards and prepaid service (scratch cards) for voice+SMS service only but are not sure which carrier has the best flat rate coverage of western Europe. We don't care about GPRS data service as there's ample 802.11b/g coverage at the places where we will be staying.

Last part of the question: Can anyone tell us specifically where at the Frankfurt airport a mobile phone shop is located, or near the airport? It should be accessible from international arrivals, after customs, so I think anything in the departure lounge areas is probably not possible...

posted by thewalrus to Travel & Transportation (4 answers total)

You can try a Vodafone Sim which is giving flat fee calling and receiving (within europe, calling to USA when outside the Sim's home may not be any cheaper). Other options may be found here which is one of the many such offerings.
posted by london302 at 7:56 AM on August 11, 2009

or here
posted by london302 at 7:57 AM on August 11, 2009

Response by poster: At least for in Germany it looks like what we want is something like this:

http://www.t-mobile.de/tarife/0,10821,17773-_1321,00.html

10 euros for each SIM to start, 5 euro cents per minute to call each others' phones...
posted by thewalrus at 8:21 AM on August 11, 2009

I think you need to decide if you want to buy a new sim in each country you visit or if you want to have a sim that you can use cheaply all over Europe. If it is the latter the options are maxroam, 0044 and others which are listed in my previous response. Many of these will be delivered to you in the US before you leave or maybe you can have them delivered to your hotel in Germany.
posted by london302 at 1:27 PM on August 11, 2009