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Posts: 3,755
Quote:
Originally Posted by hoops7k
There are phone stores everywhere.They only thing you need is to show them is your passport. It is pretty easy to get and you can recharge them at any gas station or some atm's I believe.
In which country?
Sorry - I meant to ask how to get the Optus card for data roaming in Europe - is it really possible to roam price-effectively, and what are the roaming charges for data?
Ekit offering a free travel journal for it's sim cards.
Kind of a goofy thing, but it may be helpful. They are offering a free service where you can set up an account with them or have it linked to their sim cards, so each time you make a call or send a message it figures where you are and generates a google map of your travels. If you do not use their services (they remarket under several other brands) you can sign up on their website and send them text messages for the map.
It's sort of a cool way for people to know where you are, you can control access to the maps, etc.
One of the cool things is family and friends can see if your phone is on or off, and send you messages or generate a call from your phone to them from the website.
I have not tried it yet, just stumbled on it recently, but it may be useful for some people here.
What a great thread - but only for USA/UK phone users. In Australia we are locked into Telstra or Optus even when we own our phones outright. Unlocking it costs a lot for what is essentially a 5 second computer job and to use international roaming within another country is also expensive. Anyone with ideas of how to give these two companies the thumb and be able to choose a provider in another country when we travel there? We could not use our phones in Thailand in December 08 with a Thai SIM card and it will be the same in Italy in Sept 09. Do not really wish to purchase a local phone for the 4 - 5 weeks we will be there. Any ideas?
You should be able to unlock your phone via ebay. Either do that or get a cheap unlocked phone via ebay or when you get to your destination, then buy a local prepaid sim.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rasputin21
Anyone with ideas of how to give these two companies the thumb and be able to choose a provider in another country when we travel there? We could not use our phones in Thailand in December 08 with a Thai SIM card and it will be the same in Italy in Sept 09. Do not really wish to purchase a local phone for the 4 - 5 weeks we will be there. Any ideas?
What a great thread - but only for USA/UK phone users. In Australia we are locked into Telstra or Optus even when we own our phones outright. Unlocking it costs a lot for what is essentially a 5 second computer job and to use international roaming within another country is also expensive. Anyone with ideas of how to give these two companies the thumb and be able to choose a provider in another country when we travel there? We could not use our phones in Thailand in December 08 with a Thai SIM card and it will be the same in Italy in Sept 09. Do not really wish to purchase a local phone for the 4 - 5 weeks we will be there. Any ideas?
I'm going along the lines of the previous poster.
Is your phone GSM? Doesn't anyone in Australia unlock GSM phones?
Have you considered taking your phone on a trip and getting it unlocked at the destination?
Have you considered buying an unlocked phone at your destination and saving it for future use?
By the way, here in New York, we use a different finger.
There are phone stores everywhere.They only thing you need is to show them is your passport. It is pretty easy to get and you can recharge them at any gas station or some atm's I believe.
Great info here!
I'm flying to Rome tomorrow night, Is the Wind sim card my best (cheapest) option?
In Australia we are locked into Telstra or Optus even when we own our phones outright. Unlocking it costs a lot for what is essentially a 5 second computer job and to use international roaming within another country is also expensive.
It's cheap enough to have the phones unlocked by Telstra and Optus. Costs are less than AUD 50 with either company, from memory (or if you've had your phone for a while, it might even be quite a bit less). It might seem like a lot for just a few minutes' work, but you are unlikely to be able to get an unlocked phone for less than that from a reliable supplier in Europe.
I would suggest just having them unlock the phone (having other suppliers do it may invalidate the warranty).
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Posts: 3,073
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rasputin21
Anyone with ideas of how to give these two companies the thumb and be able to choose a provider in another country when we travel there?
Buy a Samsung SGH-A437 quad band GSM for <50USD. Do a google search for "unlock A437". Follow instructions. 5 minutes later you will have an unlocked quadband GSM phone that works with a local SIM.
Last edited by sonofzeus; Feb 13, 09 at 7:34 am.
Reason: typo 9-(
Hi all. I'm in the US and will be traveling to italy in May for our wedding. We have a small wedding party that we'd like to either give SIM cards before they travel or point them to where to buy them.
I've been researching and just wanted to confirm my findings. So far this seems to be the cheapest option.
Can anyone recommend a better site to buy an Italy sim card? Also, if their is a card that has reasonable data plans to use with iphones, i'd appreciate the insight.
I thumbed through the post and there's just way to much information for me to not miss anything. LOL.
I'm traveling to London for about two and a half days and want to use my Unlocked Blackberry Bold (from AT&T). I want to be able to use it for limited phone calls and mostly SMS and internet. Ideally, I would also like for my friends to be able to call/SMS my AT&T number and have those forwarded to the UK SIM number. A few questions...
1) What is my best option to achieve this?
2) For the forwarding, I saw a number of people recommending Skype and other such services...but will that work for SMS also?
3) What company do you recommend for the Blackberry internet? I looked at United Mobile and it says under their FAQs that their Internet service doesn't work for Blackberrys.
I'm flying to Rome tomorrow night, Is the Wind sim card my best (cheapest) option?
Thanks in advance.
Sorry about the late reply. Italy is very expensive for sims I am not positive as I only used wind.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SuperFlyBoy
In which country?
Sorry - I meant to ask how to get the Optus card for data roaming in Europe - is it really possible to roam price-effectively, and what are the roaming charges for data?
I had the optus prepaid with unlimited internet for a month and it worked.
I have an unlocked phone and usually buy a SIM on arrival at my destination. I'm headed to Budapest and not finding information on prepaid SIMs as easily as I have for other destinations. If anyone can fill me in on which mobile companies in Hungary offer prepaid SIMs, and any recommendations for which is best, I would appreciate it.
My other alternatvie would be to pick up a SIM durnig my layover at LHR.
got some good advice here (especially re: three.co.uk ... hotel operator was astounded that i wasn't interested in UKL11/day internet connectivity when i could pay UKL10 for a month!) ... am travelling to germany later this year and it looks like getting a local sim is fraught with local requirements ... is there any way to do this without a local address? i'm looking to make calls and use internet on my mobile and, separately, to use 3g internet with an expresscard).
(i did give up on france ... i'm only there for a day at a time and it became not worth the hassle ... there's an orange machine in the luggage claim where i could purchase a sim but it apparently only accepts chip+pin cards for the purchase and my old-timey american payment cards don't have this.)
Unlocking phones to use in Italy
