Going to Belgium for 6 months need help...
 

Hi Guys, im going to Belgium to do some work for the European commission and would
need some advice from expert members here...

I am looking for two things mainly:

1) Mobile Broadband
Ive already puchased myself a ZTE unlocked dongle and am looking for a CHEAP data
sim card. Ive seen an offer by BASE for around 15euros a month with 750mb of data.
Ive also read on the internet about an offer from ALLORTL for 2gb of data for only 10 euros, BUT on their website it states that it is prohibited for use in a laptop, only for smartphones. If i were to use it for mobile broadband, could they do anything to me ??

2) Cheap international calls
I wont have access to a landline for the first few months, so would ideally need a cheap way to call (mainly Landlines) Bulgaria. Cheapest ive found is BASE with their pay as you go INTERNATIONAL at about 29eurocents a minute (very EXPENSIVE!).

Im afraid the cheapest option for me would be to just receive incoming roaming calls on my bulgarian sim card (charged at 14eurocents a minute)

I dont know french or dutch, so cant really read most of the sites for the MVNO operators!


Any suggestions?

Many thanks

How much data will you need, exactly?

Going from low to high amount, these are the offers you will want to take a look at:
MEDIONmobile: 400MB for €4
JIM Mobile: 500MB for €5
Mobile Vikings: 2GB for €12

(all valid 1 month)


For calls to landlines Bulgaria you could look at Lyca Mobile: €0,13/minute.


Should you need a Belgian sim shipped to Bulgaria, let me know by pm :)

I can't make any recommendation for mobile broadband but for voice calling I'd recommend OneSuite which is a prepaid "pay as you go" long distance service.

Rates from Belgium to Bulgaria are basically 7¢/minute to call Bulgarian land lines and approximately 10¢/minute to call mobile numbers.

On OneSuite's rates page you can see the whole chart. You can get the rate from Belgium to most any country. All you need to do is to buy a block of time for minimum of US$10. Expiration date of minutes keeps getting farther away the more often you use the service. There's toll-free "freephone" access of the service from Belgium and several other countries as well.

Jim is ok, Mobile Vikings is probably perfect. I checked their offers online, and from
what i gather (my french sucks) they are ONLY for use with mobile phones. Are you sure
i can use them for mobile data with my dongle on a laptop?

I would prefer to purchase one of those two cards BUT to use it both for a mobile (during most of the day)
and for data in the evenings (just to plug the sim in my dongle). Is that possible?


Nothing cheaper than Lyca mobile? anything around 4/5cents a minute ? I have spoken
with my provider, and they can offer me a roaming rate of 10eurocents a minute to receive
calls , so this may be the cheapest option :(

Thank you for your help!

In general - yes. I have used my JIM Mobile in my laptop several times, and I have a friend who uses his Mobile Vikings card for both mobile and laptop on daily basis.

Yeah, you can do that :) If you like you could also get two so you can use them simultaneously and avoid switching the sim cards back and fourth.


Nothing that I know of, sorry!

It is possible to negotiate prices with your operator in Bulgaria? :eek:

I would prefer to get one sim card as i hate having a lot of different cards. Once upon a time (check my last messages all the way back from 2005) i was obsessed with savings etc. so i went out with 5 phones.. Now i cant stand that!


I can to SOME extent negotiate prices. The reason is that my father is a big corporate client in Bulgaria and he has around 60 lines making 2500euro bills every month. Thats why the network does special deals for us, like free forever VPN calls, free on net calls , and all that for a 2.5euro a month line rental :)

I have looked into it. Thank you for the information

Maybe this information is too late for you:

Now Mobile Vikings provides a much better plan. Here is the review I posted on my blog.

Mobile Vikings got itself quite some competition for it's €15 euro SMS+Internet package from Proximus: Belgacom Generation Connect - Ontdek het aanbod

It should be added that Base is Belgium's worst network while Proximus is Belgium's best, so it might be worth considering (although MV is still much cheaper for data-only).