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This is awesome. Traveling in Europe right now (from USA) and bought a 5GB data only Ortel card in Italy on June 5 for 20 euro. June 11th I'm in Salzburg and it
by joshe 9y ago
This is awesome. Traveling in Europe right now (from USA) and bought a 5GB data only Ortel card in Italy on June 5 for 20 euro. June 11th I'm in Salzburg and it doesn't work, which is my previous experience. I go to Slovenia for a few days where it does work, possibly because of the new regulation, some carriers apparently started it up on June 1. Yesterday June 17th cross back into Austria and It Works!
It works now in Prague too, though maybe it would have anyway.
So now this one 20 euro prepaid data card has worked in Germany, Austria, Slovenia, and the Czech republic.
This was so confusing before, lots of sim cards would roam in different countries, but only for texts and sms. The data would just shut down. Sometimes one type of plan would work and another wouldn't (on the same carrier). The carriers were super confusing about what would work where, digging through their sites would yield nothing about were things would work. You had to talk to phone shop people and other travelers to figure it out.
It it so great not to have to manage this country by country or get a special carrier to do this. And Europe is tiny, there was a guy on my train commuting from Slovenia to Austria for his paramedic job. And see http://thetruesize.com/ http://thetruesize.com/
The news is underplaying how much better this is. It rocks.
- c2h5oh 9y agoIt's more likely that it's your phone/device that is the source of the issue. There are 10 LTE bands currently in use in Europe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LTE_frequency_bands#Deployments_by_region https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LTE_frequency_bands#Deployment... and 2 UMTS bands: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UMTS_frequency_bands#Deployments_by_region_.28UMTS-FDD.29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UMTS_frequency_bands#Deploymen... Those are not necessarily the same bands that are in use in North America or Asia, or some other region and as a result there are very, very few phones that actually support all of them - even the EU variants. Google Pixel is the only phone I'm aware of that supports every single one.
- joshe 9y agoI buried the lede, the point is that it didn't work in Austria June 11, and it did on June 17th. June 15th is when the rule went into effect. Slovenia and Czech Republic working are speculation. (But I've heard so many complaints about data roaming for prepaid that I think it's possibly better). And so far its worked everywhere, after June 15th I haven't had issues. But if it's relevant to anyone my iPhone 6S model (a1688) does have pretty good LTE band coverage for Europe. Namely, bands 1,3,7,20,38. http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/iphone/specs/apple-iphone-6s-a1688-4.7-inch-global-sprint-verizon-specs.html http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/iphone/specs/apple-iph... "Please note that this A1688 iPhone 6s model is compatible with LTE bands 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 12, 13, 17, 18, 19, 20, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, (but not 30) in addition to TD-LTE bands 38, 39, 40, and 41 -- is intended for Sprint and Verizon as well as sold with a T-Mobile nano-SIM in the United States and a wide variety of carriers in Canada, Europe, Asia, and elsewhere worldwide."
- c2h5oh 9y agoYeah, iPhones support quote a few bands too and each model released is doing better, but they are still releasing multiple regional variants with different bands supported: https://www.apple.com/iphone/LTE/ https://www.apple.com/iphone/LTE/
- herbst 9y agoGood point. US phones usually fail to include at least some common bands.