I really could use a SIM card for very light very infrequent use -- when you are at an airport and you need to make one quick phone call to the hotel "where's the hotel shuttle?". Send a text. Download that one email. Peek at Google Maps. We are talking of a few megabytes, tops ( I have a flex data plan for my Nexus 7 so I am monitoring the data usage so I know ), 1 minute of airtime, 1 text. Once you are out the sticky situation you obviously get a local SIM but still the airport can be very tricky (I have nightmares of some hotel pickups still).

I looked at http://www.onesimcard.com/ Plus SIM (for this usage it seems their Data & Roam is actually worse) and say Hungary is 0.25 cents / MB. That's not bad. Australia / New Zealand is 0.50 cents that's a bit worse :/ And the website says nothing about how long the card is alive after a refill.

So, any good cards for this usage? I tried to search the forum but couldn't find a recent global thread.

Edit: ah! http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trave...sticker-4.html points to knowroaming Hungary is 15c/MB and New Zealand is only 25c/MB and it also does not require you to switch SIM cards. Anything even cheaper ?

It's in the sticky at the top of the thread:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trave...paid-sims.html

But for the use you describe, it's probably cheapest and easiest to just use your home service.

Oh the international thread is linked from the country specific thread? I thought that was country specific and didn't even look there for international

And I don't have a home service that could roam, I just dropped my normal plan and I use a tablet data plan. (Edit: the page says, roaming available upon request, no mention of costs, a brief Googling indicates several dollars a megabyte, perhaps even $10, I'd rather not go with that.)

Well, I'd suggest checking out T-mobile, which offers free data and sms in over 100 countries and voice calls at $0.20/min.

Else, the main multi-country providers are going to still be pretty pricey - pricier by far than the international roaming packages most carriers offer.

T-Mobile is the USA and I'm in Canada, I have a T-Mobile prepaid SIM but I doubt that'd work like described

LOL, have you seen the international options of Canadian carriers? Not to mention that I'd probably need to pay a monthly fee to keep one alive. I thought 15c / MB is pretty good for international data.

We have a winner! http://www.piranha-mobile.com/ let's see: Hungary 16 cents a megabyte, New Zealand 16 cents too ( I pick NZ because it's notoriously expensive among the developed countries -- and I don't have any relatives in Afghanistan or somesuch -- which I usually travel in). UK some providers only 8 cents. 420 days is the expire period and you can just use data to avoid expiration, no need to make a call. It has VoIP calls for 1 cents a minute. Free international shipping. Initial investment is just 12GBP (<20USD) and that has 5GBP credit.

I just ordered a SIM from them - the 12GPB SIM and added 10GPB additional credit. I'll be in Budapest, Vienna and Prague and don't have enough days in each city to bother with country-specific SIMs and this looked like it would work out well. I don't have it yet but was very impressed by their customer service - an email I sent with questions was responded to almost immediately.