Originally Posted by
Vegas Vegan
Please forgive me for newbie questions on this.
Going to Europe in three weeks for three weeks. I've been forced kicking and screaming into the smartphone century
as I've just bought an unlocked GSM phone; I am not planning on taking my ATT flip phone with me. So naturally, I have questions:
- I'm going to various countries (Netherlands, Romania, Czech Republic, Poland, Ukraine, Denmark); at which country do I get the SIM card? The first one I arrive at or the one I'm staying at the longest?
- Do I need to get one card that covers all the countries or one for each country?
- Would I still need one for wifi as all of the hotels I've booked offer free wifi, as do some trains. If the train I'm on doesn't have wifi, I have a book to read
- Are there any carriers that I should stay away from? In other words, which ones are better than others?
- Can I just buy a SIM good for the 3 weeks or am I locked into some longer term?
- If I call back to the US, does that person get charged for an international call or just on my end?
Thanks for helping me try to understand all this gibberish
1 - AFAIK pay as you go SIMs do not have roaming capabilities, so you would need 1 for each country
2 - see above.
3 - wifi capability completely independent of cellular-data-connectivity
4 - if it's short term use SIMs...beggars cant be choosers
5 - these things dont have duration terms.... as far as your usage is concerned. they're charged with # of minutes and # of data.
6 - i think most packages are provisioned for national calls only
if you need only to make calls, look into a voice-over-ip system, whether through skype or viber or anything else.... then you'll have a consistent # to be reached at, and you can use any data service be it wifi or any carrier's SIM