International or National SIM? - Page 2

Motel75 · 09-07-2009, 11:38

Quote:

Originally Posted by jhanlon

One of the OP's factors that has not been mentioned is "reasonable rates to call the US." If the SIM that you choose has free incoming calls, then your best bet for calls to the US is probably a call-back service like Callback World, which is the one that I use.

All European SIMs have free incoming calls in the country of origin (and the cost is capped when roaming within the EU to about 20 cents/min, depending on the local VAT rate). As mentioned above, several German SIMs have 9 cent/min calls to the US. Solomo is probably the best deal overall, but only available online. Fonic is also 9 cents, and widely available in drugstores and supermarkets. Both offer 24 cent/MB standard data rate.

petkow · 09-07-2009, 15:31

Quote:

Originally Posted by fedeprovenza

PrePaidGSM: O2 (Germany) (you can subscribe o2 flat, 3,50 euro/one day)

Also I would not recommend this as being best value for money for data in Germany these days!

brikis98 · 23-08-2009, 00:11

Just got back from my trip to Germany. As recommended on this forum, I got a Fonic SIM card at Lidl, which worked out great. If I remember correctly, it cost something like 9 Euro and had ~6 Euro of starter credit on it, which is a pretty sweet deal. I also bought a 20 Euro top up card to bring the total to 26 Euro, which turned out to be far more than I needed. After 12 days of somewhat heavy data usage (using Google Maps, checking email, looking up train schedules with the nice ZugInfo iPhone app, browsing the web a bit) and a little bit of phone usage (a few calls within Germany and a few to the US), I still had 13 Euros of credit left. I had decent connectivity all over (I was in Berlin, Potsdam, Dresden, St. Goar, Bacharach and a few other places) with 3G service in the larger cities and Edge connectivity elsewhere. The only difficulty was activation, which was a bit confusing with my crappy understanding of German, but once I got it figured out, it was smooth sailing from there.

Thanks for the help folks

9eor9 · 23-08-2009, 13:50

If you'd like to use your (or one of your SIMs) SIM for long duration calls to the US and other countries I can recommend you

CallYa OpenEnd Talk&SMS ? Prepaid-Wiki

This is a Vodafone CallYa Prepaid tariff called CallYa Open End Talk&SMS which will be charged with 29€ct per call to german landline.

The CallYa SIMs are very cheap now as they usually come with a simlocked mobile. You may find even offers for 1€ with 10€ balance.

With this method you call DialNow | Cheap International Calls and any further minute to the US will cost you an additional €0,5ct.

For data (9€ct/min) this card is not as cheap as others (i.e.blau.de) which are 24€ct/MB

Detailed info on German prepaid offers you'll find on Prepaid-Wiki

For international use I like my airBalticcard | About airBalticcard Mobile (no data!).

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	(#13)
brikis98 (Offline) Junior Member Newbie Posts: 7 Join Date: 06 Jul 2009 Country:	23-08-2009, 00:11 Just got back from my trip to Germany. As recommended on this forum, I got a Fonic SIM card at Lidl, which worked out great. If I remember correctly, it cost something like 9 Euro and had ~6 Euro of starter credit on it, which is a pretty sweet deal. I also bought a 20 Euro top up card to bring the total to 26 Euro, which turned out to be far more than I needed. After 12 days of somewhat heavy data usage (using Google Maps, checking email, looking up train schedules with the nice ZugInfo iPhone app, browsing the web a bit) and a little bit of phone usage (a few calls within Germany and a few to the US), I still had 13 Euros of credit left. I had decent connectivity all over (I was in Berlin, Potsdam, Dresden, St. Goar, Bacharach and a few other places) with 3G service in the larger cities and Edge connectivity elsewhere. The only difficulty was activation, which was a bit confusing with my crappy understanding of German, but once I got it figured out, it was smooth sailing from there. Thanks for the help folks

	(#14)
9eor9 (Offline) Senior Member Prepaid Expert Posts: 223 Join Date: 10 Apr 2009 Country:	23-08-2009, 13:50 If you'd like to use your (or one of your SIMs) SIM for long duration calls to the US and other countries I can recommend you CallYa OpenEnd Talk&SMS ? Prepaid-Wiki This is a Vodafone CallYa Prepaid tariff called CallYa Open End Talk&SMS which will be charged with 29€ct *per call* to german landline. The CallYa SIMs are very cheap now as they usually come with a simlocked mobile. You may find even offers for 1€ with 10€ balance. With this method you call DialNow \| Cheap International Calls and any further minute to the US will cost you an additional €0,5ct. For data (9€ct/min) this card is not as cheap as others (i.e.blau.de) which are 24€ct/MB Detailed info on German prepaid offers you'll find on Prepaid-Wiki For international use I like my airBalticcard \| About airBalticcard Mobile (no data!).