[Yazcedric]

Hi, wwbusch

It is very easy to buy a prepaid SIM card in Hong Kong.
There are many shops (Vodafone-Smartone, 3, etc) that sell a starter package (particularly in Tsim Sha Tsui area).
These stores are located almost every 2-3 blocks in the east side of Tsim Sha Tsui and they are usually open ~9:00 or 10:00pm.
When I bought my Vodafone-Smartone value-stored (prepaid) SIM card in summer of 2006, it was very easy to activate the service.
The sales people (at least Vodafone-Smartone's shop; I don't know the other stores) were very helpful.
When I purchased a starter package, I did not have to show anything (except my money)
- unlike France; I had to show my passport and report my "hotel address" in Paris when I activated Orange SIM.
As for Vodafone-Smartone, you can top up airtime through website (at least, they accepted a credit card issued in US).

I am not sure whether you can activate the brand-new Hong Kong SIM card while in Europe.
If you have a friend in Hong Kong and SIM is activated and tested before shipment, this is not an issue.
Also, the roaming is available, but relatively expensive (compared to the rate for making local calls/long distance calls from Hong Kong).
So, I use this SIM only when I stay in Hong Kong.

I had two minor issues with my Smartone account.
1) Once I activated my SIM, I received several SMSs indicating my balance, expiration date, and password.
My initial SMSs were all delivered in Chinese (or Cantonese? well, my Nokia E70 has chinese fonts)
until I made a call to the customer service to change the language option to English.
You can guess the expiration date, account balance, and password (for recharging your account) because these are all numbers or $ anyway.
So, I would take the phone to the store when you buy SIM card and activate the service
unless you are savvy in understanding Chinese characters.
Or, this just happened to me because my phone accepts Chinese font.

2) I visited Hong Kong last December and an earthquake in Taiwan damaged communication cable during my stay.
I was able to top-up from Smartone's website before I left US for Hong Kong,
but I had to purchase another voucher because internet was not accessible due to this damage.
Interestingly, I was able to make a call to US by this SIM card without any interruption (internet was more vulnable than cellphone, I guess).
When I tried to top-up my airtime by a voucher purchased at 7-eleven near subway station, I could not charge the airtime to my account by SMS.
I was quite upset because I got a message that "the card is invalid" and no credit was given.
When I went to Smartone's shop, they just looked up my account and the voucher and fixed the issue in a minute!
They recommended me to purchase airtime at their shop or through web site (well, I could not choose latter option at that time).
I still don't understand why my voucher card did not charge airtime,
but I would use website because these convenience stores usually do not carry different denominations
(or they just want to sell you more expensive voucher by saying, "oh, we only have these cards").

Sorry, I am not sure about GPRS for these prepaid SIMs because I used my SIM for voicecalls (well, internet was non-usable when I visited last time...)

Hope this will help your upcoming trip.