Thread: SIM for holiday in UK/Europe?

I've found you need a different sim for each country or you are charged roaming even if it's the "same" network.

Roaming could still be cheaper than buying a card for each country (with the attendant hassle of getting one. We'll be cruising up the Rhine for 8 days).

In anticipation of our trip to UK/Europe last year I did a comparison of what was on offer and found that (at that time) the SIM offered by Woolworths was far and away the best value for money...http://www.woolworthsglobalroaming.c...FVcnvQodAxUAPw... this might not be the same now. It operated in UK, Ireland and most of western Europe and Morocco. Gives you an Australian number for people to phone you. You can also forward your mobile and home phone to this same Australian number.

Our daughter who has moved to London for the foreseeable future has a Vodaphone account which seems to work effortlessly wherever she goes in continental Europe

For email etc I set up travelling Google email account and we used the ample free wifi...

My daughter has just returned from the UK. She was with a group and was the only one who did not have any problems with their mobile. She is with Vodafone and paid the extra charge per day for roaming. It was worth it and not very expensive. Although 6 years ago I was in the UK and Mediterranean area with Telstra roaming and had no problems. Jim

Thanks Hoges. I had a look at the Woolies SIM and some others and one could see that the websites were almost identical except for the colours.

I saw on the Aust Business Traveller website that many of these SIMs are Estonia based. ABT also noted that they use internet telephony so quality can suffer. How did you find audio quality?

We have Gmail accounts. We can access our usual accounts via webmail when overseas.

Hi Ron, the call quality was OK, it was quite good in the UK but varied markedly in Ireland. We had a week in Marrakesh and it worked OK for short calls. Several places we used Skype on a Samsung tablet on a public Wi-Fi system... We also set up a Gmail account for travelling...worked very well. We found public libraries an excellent source for free internet for arranging accommodation when we got stuck...
I thoroughly checked out the Optus costs for "roaming" ...they were prohibitive at that time. Some friends who were with Telstra however had some sort of Telstra deal and it was as cheap, if not cheaper than the Woolworths offering and a lot less hassle.
cheers

Would say it all depends on how much time you intend to spend on the phone.

Friends who are over here at the moment had set up roaming on their Australian number however found it far cheaper to just buy a local prepaid chip for each country. Also had the upside of allowing them to manage the actual spend. They were using the phone to call ahead to find a place to stay for the night while travelling.

A little late for you however they are working towards removing roaming charges for use of an EU based number within the EU from 2016.

Skype or similar using the internet rather than a 3G mobile connection was also a good option they were using.

Am sure you are aware to take care with data usage as the warnings they send in regard to use can be 5 or so days behind your actual use with associated costs building up.

Something else to check is one I had a while ago from Vodafone so do not know if it is still offered. It was not advertised I asked about it after a friend told me about it and was then offered a product which allowed me to use my UK phone and contract air time in Australia as if I was in the UK with no additional charges. Might be something similar which operates in reverse so to speak.

I am in Latvia at the moment and have been back and forth to Russia and estonia and will be for a while. I uses Travel sim Nz but I believe is ozzie based.
Here is the link for you: TravelSIM International SIM Card
It is excellent and works well all over Russia and the Baltic's and the call quality is better than New Zealand. It is estonia based as you say and you get a Estonian number. there are 0800 numbers for people to ring you and a free web based tex system. you need a unlocked phone to work it and you must setup your phone as per the website and put in a credit card for payment. I got the card and activated in may before I left, I got a call with one hour offering help etc.
It's a great product and much cheaper than Nz Vodafone who want up to Nz$ 7 a minute for calls and $1 for texts etc.
you can turn mobile data on and off but that is still very expensive ( and also expensive on local country pre paid SIM cards that you can buy in each place)but Wifi and Skype etc are your answer there.
I need my online banking while away so I changed my password from my normal one and used a two step login where it sends a code to your mobile as well ( you could use the travel sim mobile as well although i brought my other sim along as a back up)so no one can hack your account even with the password ( if I used dodgy WiFi somewhere) and when I get home I will change it back to the easier password.
PS just got a text from them, within Europe and the UK calls to 25cents a minute, some kind of special I think.