15 days in Ireland + 5 days in London
 

My wife and I are travelling in August. We will be in Republic of Ireland for 15 days and London for 5. We'll probably do three SIMs in Ireland (1 Voice+Data for phablet; heavy use for data, medium for voice; 1 for basic voice mobile, low use; 1 for data-only tablet, medium use).

In London, we'll probably be fine with 1 Voice+data, medium usage, for the phablet.

I've started looking on here for Ireland, and it seems Meteor would be best. But would it be best to use it over there, or get another SIM? Or is there something that would be better to use in the two countries?

Thanks!
Kevin

Better get a 3 Austria SIM for both countries.

I would recommend that you pick different SIM cards in both countries to get the best tariffs. As you have already researched - Meteor is probably the best option in Ireland. Even if you choose their most basic tariff €5 per month nominally 50MB, you can add the 1GB Internet Add-on for free for the first month by simply texting "sub internet 1GB"
to 50104. That gives you 1GB during your 15 day trip for €5 - hard to beat!
This is not very clear on their website - so make sure to send that text message after you activate.

You also get free unlimited access to the national network of Wi-Fi hotspots operated by Meteor's parent - Eircom. eg Dublin Airport, Railway stations, many cafes, hotels etc. Map on their site.

Meteor also have an interesting roaming feature that might help you in London. They offer free incoming calls when roaming in Europe, providing you text Europe to 50104 in advance. You also get a reasonable rate of 99c per day for 10MB of data. (If you go over 10MB, then 55c/MB applies). Hence if topped up your Meteor SIM with €10 in Ireland, you could use first €5 to give you 1GB of access in Ireland, and the remainder to give you 10MB per day in London! (I'm ignoring any voice minutes, or text - assuming you will use Skype/Viber or VOIP, What's App etc).

If you need more Data in London, I can recommend GiffGaff who do 1GB for £7.50, but you have to buy a minimum £10 top-up. MVNO on the O2 network in UK, which is good.

(I would avoid Three in both UK & Ireland - worst network in both countries, and their roaming agreements for Voice don't cover data in the areas where they don't have native coverage)

By the way, I assume that you want to have separate SIMs for yourself and your wife to call each other - so a free on-net voice tariff would probably make most sense without having to bother with Skype/Viber. The Meteor top-up option of €10 supports this, whereas the €5 top-up only supports free on-net texting. I don't understand why you wouldn't use tethering to support the data only tablet? Meteor support Tethering. GiffGaff in UK also support tethering on their data SIMs.

I was last in Ireland some years ago and had a Meteor SIM because of their better tariffs. It turned out to be a bit of a mistake because we spent a lot of our time on the west coast, where Meteor's coverage was fairly thin. Since then a lot of things may have changed. They now claim 99% coverage.

Whilst Three Austria's Like Home roaming is interesting, only calls home to Austria are going to be as cheap as while there, and calls locally in Ireland and then UK will be at roaming rates.

For someone willing to use a call through arrangement this might be OK, it does add extra complication,, including getting the SIM.

For UK, giffgaff might be interesting, especially now they introduced cheaper international calls after all this time. Three UK's new cheap PAYG rates might also be quite tempting, 3p/min calls and 1p/MB.

Yes - Meteor has built out coverage over the last few years, and now there is very little difference between it and market-leading Vodafone. They also have a mast sharing agreement with O2 and a national roaming agreement with Vodafone which you can switch over to in a small number of regions of the West of Ireland. However, note that those 99% 2G coverage figures quoted by all the networks are for population, not geographic area. All the networks still have blackspots in very rural areas of the West of Ireland. Also 3G & HSPA coverage still tends to be limited in very rural areas, so don't expect high data speeds in all areas of the West coast.

If you have keep attention who better know that kevinn needs a data only sim card and the Austrian sim card is perfect for this.

Thank you for your concern over my eyesight, but I'm fairly sure the word voice appears more than once in the original post.