What is the best option for me? (Italy, France and Spain)
 

Hi all,

I was starting to feel a bit cross-eyed from looking at so many different global sim card options and rates when I stumbled across this lovely site. Now I'm hoping some of you knowledgable people could help me out. Here's the situation; my two sisters and I will be going to 3 different countries (Italy, France, and Spain) for a very brief trip. By brief I mean; about 8 days in Italy, 4 days in Paris, and 4 days in Barcelona. I was wondering which global sim card you would recommend. Some factors that I would like taken into consideration would be:

1) We would only use these sim cards to make calls/text to each other. I've seem some global sim cards give calls within er.. network.. discounted rates.
2) How much the sim/credit costs combined with shipping rates to Canada.
3) How well it works... this is the part where I ask how annoying having call routed through Estonia is.

That's all I can really think of for now. Also, we all have phones that are unlocked and will work on the proper frequencies.

So far I like the look of MaxRoam overall but would love to find one similar that has a call-to-same-company-sim card-user-discount that works without too many problems.

Thank you for time and consideration!

As the rates within the EU are regulated you might want to concider just buying some italian cards after arrival.

Outside italy you can call each other for about 45ct/min + 13ct/min for the inbound call and text for 13ct.

Travelsim/Airbalticcard (Estonia) works very reliable, the rates are a bit cheaper (as the inbound charge is missing).

I never Maxroam so i cant say something about that provider.


EU regulated tariff from July 1st 2011:

- outbound calls within EU: 35ct+VAT
- inbound calls within EU: 11 ct+VAT
- outbound SMS within EU: 11ct +VAT
- inbound SMS always free of charge

Chris

How is the call quality for airbalticcard? And do text go through instantly?

So far i did not encounter any problems with the airbalticcard. Free text messages over their website are transferred within one minute, from mobile phones instantly.

Chris