Austria Prepaid Data - update
 

Some updates on Prepaid data options in Austria.

On arriving in Vienna airport there was a stall selling Vectone SIMs for €10. This was convenient as it was a Sunday, and shops in Austria are closed - so I bought one. Vectone is an MVNO off the T-Mobile network which is the 2nd best network in Austria. The guy on the stall claimed the data was "unlimited". I pressed him for a FUP or cap - but he said there wasn't one. Research on their website afterwards suggests that there is a 3GB FUP - but this is still quite good. I used about 2.5GB in the week - so I didn't get to find out if the FUP kicks in at 3GB.

Overall performance was generally good. However, there is one really annoying feature in Austria - all the networks seem to have 2G national roaming, and since A1 (Austria Telecom) have the best network - your phone keeps jumping to A1 to get the best 2G signal. I didn't want voice, and 2G data is very poor - so I set my phone to WCDMA only to avoid it jumping back to A1 2G. The roaming agreement doesn't work for 3G - so this ensures that you stay on your own network. It worked much better after that.

The SIM also came with free on-net Vectone calls/texts and some Austrian & International calls/texts - but I didn't need these.

Another member of my group got a Hofer SIM card - "Complete" starter pack - €14.90 in a Hofer(Aldi) store. This worked even better than my Vectone card - but had a cap of 1.5GB on it. It was on the A1 network - so coverage was better than my Vectone card on T-Mobile.

Avoid the 3 network in Austria - like most other countries, 3 usually has the worst coverage.

Thanks for the update. Was activating easy? Was registration required?

This is also known as the yesss! card.

Three Austria (DREI)
 

From my experience DREI Austria (three)
Has good 3G coverage almost everywhere and
On small places and some roads it has 2G on Tmobile networks
Just you should enable surfing in roaming option on your phone
Maybe some people don't go that and they think there is no Internet

Yes - activating was very easy. The guy on the Vectone stall in Vienna airport did the activation on the spot while I waited - less than 5 minutes. No passport needed. APN set up automatically

The Yesss card from Hofer was also very easy to activate. No manual set up of APN required - it worked immediately. It clearly has to work - you could hardly expect checkout staff in Hofer to help!

Yesss - I forgot to mention the name of the card!

The place I was staying was quite small - definitely no 3 - even T-Mobile ended up roaming on A1. 2G roaming is fine if you just want voice/text - but it is generally useless for mobile internet access. A lot of visitors to Austria probably are not in the cities - but in the beautiful countryside. If I was going again, I would definitely pick A1, or one of the MVNO's off A1.

Dear Drama Queen. Thanks for the update. It is most unlikely, that a TMO Simcard is roaming on A1 since they are competitors and there is definately NO national roaming agreement in place between A1 and TMO.

More likely is, that your vectone mobile is allowed to roam on A1 since this has been the original provider for vectone before they moved to TMO just recently.

If you want a service that uses A1 network, there is a wide choice:

- BOB www.bob.at
- YESSS www.yesss.at (only available at Hofer ((Aldi)))
- BilliTel www.billitel.at
- Ge-Org www.georg.at (MVNO brand of Media Markt)
- B-Free http://www.a1.net/handys-telefonie/bfree-wertkate-plus (original prepaid by A1)

All of them offer good services including data packages a certain prices, however B-Free seems to be the most expensive one. For low priced international calls you should have a look at BilliTel.

All the best...

BK

OK - perhaps you are right. The phone definitely showed the R icon, indicating that it was roaming away from T-Mobile, and it only showed 2G/Edge when it was roaming. In any case, I found this 2G roaming access to be of no help to me, as it only forced the phone into 2G mode. When I disabled the 2G/GSM mode on the phone it always locked onto T-Mobile 3G and stayed with it unless I had no coverage.

MY experience of 3
 

I am a bit contrary to you as when I was there in it goes on smoothly ans I feel comfortable using that. It may happen that you must havent enabled data packet or roaming option. Overall that was good.:)