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What is the correct European SIM to buy for data/voice/etc. (prepaid)? Presumably best to get one from a country you don't actually visit much, so you're alway
by rdl 9y ago
What is the correct European SIM to buy for data/voice/etc. (prepaid)? Presumably best to get one from a country you don't actually visit much, so you're always roaming, and thus don't pay the home to foreign number charges?
- matteuan 9y agoThere is a limit of 4 months of roaming usage per year.
- dorian-graph 9y agoDo you have a source for that so I can read more into it?
- apexalpha 9y agoI think it's 60 days a year. So a 'normal' person going on vacation, traveling for work, visiting a city just across the border will have fee-less roaming. But you can't go to Romania, buy a SIM and use it here indefinitely.
- ClashTheBunny 9y agoYou have to go to Romania, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Bulgaria, and Poland get one each? Or just get six cards from different services?
- matteuan 9y agoIn that case you will call cheap only within the countries you listed. No roaming fees doesn't mean that calling between different countries will be cheaper.
- JoeCamel 9y agoThere is of course fair use policy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_roaming_regulations#Fair_use_policy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_roaming_regulat...
- panzer_wyrm 9y agoUk three. Uk is the only sane (at least on this topic) country left in the EU in which you could buy a sim card without photo id.
- slindz 9y agoI bought two SIM cards while travelling this month, one in Estonia, one in Latvia. No ID checks at either. Felt nice.
- ptaipale 9y agoYou can get prepaids without any ID card in Finland, at least. Sweden as well, the last time I bought. Regular subscriptions not, that's relevant for invoicing (as you can buy things through these subscriptions, it is pretty much like getting a credit card, hence asking for photo ID is entirely reasonable.)
- Strom 9y agoThis seems incorrect. I've traveled around in EU and haven't seen a single ID check for SIMs yet. Where is this happening? In my home country of Estonia we even have SIMs being given away for free on the streets as advertisement.
- diegoprzl 9y agoIn Spain you need to provide your ID for a prepaid SIM. They even requested your ID for SIMs you already owned and eventually disconnected all the unidentified.
- nunobrito 9y agoIn Portugal the ID is needed for the large operators (e.g. Vodafone). Not sure but likely not needed for Lyca and such. In Germany you can buy SIM cards on the local supermarket, no ID requested.
- rdl 9y agoGermany (O2) had an obnoxious check. The dude bitched at me because I had a copy of my passport "saved in the cloud" (it was in 1Password local on my phone; given that the US, RU, CN, JP, UA, MY etc governments all have copies of my passport already, it's a whole lot less sensitive than anything else I have in a local-only encrypted database on my phone. It took about 30m to go through the process.