Shop to buy phone SIMs in FRA?
 

We will be passing through FRA in a few weeks and will have lots of time to kill in the airport (an understatement - we have a 7 hour layover between flights on two separate tickets). One task I'd like to accomplish during all that free time we will have in the airport is buying SIM cards for our phones/tablets.

We won't be staying in Germany other than our (admittedly long) transit through the airport; our actual destination is Corsica (France), so we will want SIMs from a carrier that works outside Germany, across the EU (when we fly home, we will be stopping for a few days in continental France before going by rail to Switzerland for a day before catching our long flight home). My understanding is that generally SIMs from just about any EU country should work (equally well?) across all of them (and in non-EU Switzerland, too) so I assume that's not going to be an issue.

I'm guessing that in this huge airport there will be plenty of shops selling phone SIMs. Can anyone recommend a decent one? Thanks.

Why not just buy a SIM when you get to France ? The EU has gotten rid of data roaming, but that does not hold true yet for telephone calls. So if for whatever reason you need to call your French hôtel or whatever when you are in France or any other country, you cannot do so without the appropriate credit/roaming.

With a 7h correspondance you could easily go to the city centre.

Are you sure? I have no personal experience since I use Google Fi (very convenient when traveling abroad), but

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europe...ng_regulations

seems to show that roaming calls are regulated, too.

EU-roaming works as you understand, but I'd be wary about Switzerland. It's not usually included, you would have to double check that the plan you sign up for explicitly includes it.

You can call a phone number in your home country wherever in the EU you may be, but that does not mean you can call anywhere in the EU.

Example : If you have a french SIM, you can call a french number from anywhere in the EU, but you cannot call a belgian one. So if the OP got a german number, he can call a german number from anywhere in the EU, but he cannot call a French number even if he is physically in France.

Maybe I am misinterpreting this table from Wikipedia, but it seems to say that you can call any EEA number at home rates, no?

https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...6b681142e.jpeg

Why not buy eSIMs before your trip? Whatever you find at airport concessions is unlikely to be the best deal.

I'm not aware with all kinds of tariffs, but normally you can call every number. Question is if it's included or comes with an extra charge.

The question is what you need the sim for? Data mainly? Data+Voice? How often do you plan to use a regular phone call? With data you can use whatsapp or similiar apps to call friends and family.

Dataroaming in the EU includes all EU countries plus very often UK, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland and Lichtenstein. So with a French or German SIM you are okay for dataroaming in all countries you will visit. In Germany the three large brand are T-Mobile, Vodafone and O2. In addition there a hundreds of virtual providers that sell under their own brand names but use one of the mentioned three main networks. All brands offer prepaid packages which is in your case the most convenient way to go.