Nokia SIM card for Europe - help please!
 

I've had a look around, but it's a little confusing for someone like me who doesn't know much about all the mobile phone jargon these days, and exactly how they work. So perhaps you might be able to set me on the right track....

Later this year I'll be going to Europe, and I was wondering if I could buy a SIM card over there for my Nokia 6300, which would work in England, Poland, France, Spain, Italy and Portugal (the countries I'm visiting).

I won't be using my phone too much, except for texting and the odd phonecall within Europe (but mostly texts). To keep in touch with home sweet home, I'll stick to emails and internet cafés and not the phone.

The only phone company outside of Australia I know of is Orange. If I bought an Orange SIM thing in England, would it be too expensive to use in these other countries of Western Europe as well or is there some sort of group-thing, being EU countries?

What would be the best option for me? In fact, I've heard certain stories about Orange, and I'm sure there might be an even better company?

Vodafone may be a good option- particularly if you can activate the "passport" service which allows you to roam at the same price as your "home sim" country when on the Vodafone networks.

Take a look at Tru:

http://www.truphone.com/en-US/Products/Whats-Tru/

As a US-based customer, I received both a US number based in my home state (Florida) as well as a UK number. With this sim loaded in unlocked Nokia E71, I was able to make local calls in the UK, as well as calls at lower roaming rates when in Spain and Germany. People in the US needing to reach me could do so by dialing the Florida number as a domestic call.

If you're really not going to be making many calls it's cheap to get a local SIM in any European country and just roam in others. With the new regulations in place in Europe for maximum roaming rate that would be the cheapest thing to do. Generally you can get a SIM from any mobile operator and they'll give you €5 or €10 credit for just starting out and you can add more as you need it. If you choose Vodafone they have some sort of an agreement that you can add funds in any country that has a Vodafone affiliate so you're always able to add more credit to your account.

If you go to http://www.thisistheuk.org/ and do a find on "sims" there are a number of vendors.

Like Catweazle, I am also not up-to-date on using cell phones/sim cards in Europe. I ordered an unlocked Nokia 6300 using my points on Club Bing. Hope it gets here before I leave. We're going to Austria in April and my husband needs to keep in touch with the office. This phone is (according to the Nokia website) messaging capable. Does anyone know if it's possible to get sim cards that have more money/time/data on them so that any unused portion of what's on the sim, he can give it to his sister who lives in Austria when he leaves. We're not going to any other countries.

Also, do I just get the sim card, stick it in the phone and it's ready to go?

The answer to both of your questions is yes. You should be able to buy sim card and topup as needed. And, yes. You just put the sim card in the phone. As long as the 6300 has the 900/1800 6300 bands used in Europe.

I'm a UK customer who's been trialling a SIM corporate account. I like them very much and they have brought down my data roaming charges significantly when travelling throughout the US.

Here's a long and in-depth review of their service.

It sounds like they don't provide as good a service to their individuals as to their corporate accounts, so you might want to factor that into your decision. Still, they go a long way to bringing the cost of roaming down and that should make up for it.

You should have a look at Hutchinson's '3 like home' service. I know as a 3.ie billpay customer that I can call Ireland from Australia and it's treated as a local call. 3 operate in England and Italy so there may be some savings to take advantage of.

Does Truphone offer their data roaming (500 MB/mo) on a corporate account at the same rate in the "non-Truphone" countries. I.e. if I were to dump my TMo blackberry w/int'l email in favor of Truphone and I roam in Turkey, Greece, Japan, etc. that the data used would come out of the 500 MB/month bucket? Or is there extra cost?

First make sure your phone is compatible with European networks (has to be able to work on the same bands... I don't recall what Aussie phones work on). Second, I would recommend getting a TMobile SIM card in the UK as that seems to be your first stop. You can top up at many locations in the UK or online once outside of UK, just make sure to register online once you get the card. The rates outside of the UK are standard EU roaming rates (~€0,40/min).

All GSM networks outside of the Americas work on GSM 900 and/or 1800. The US, Canada and many American (North and South) use GSM 850 and/or 1900. A quad-band phone will work on voice services in 90% of the world save for Japan and South Korea. There is some 900 and 1800 in some of Central and South America.

Not completely accurate.

In Argentina, GSM carriers also use 850 and 1900 MHz.

I was surprised to find this when I first visited there.

I'm sure that there are other countries (a few, anyway) that are out of North America that do not use 900 and 1800 MHz.

Last time I checked (and this has at least been a few days) Argentina is part of South Americawhich is considered the Americas. You did notice that I wrote the Americas didn't you? Aha, I thought so.

Frequencies for mobile communications in the Americas
 

In South and Central America there are a variety of frequencies used for GSM with GSM 850, 900, 1800 and 1900 Mhz. Canada and the US only use 850 and 1900.