Traveling to Europe this summer

[brikis98]

Usually when I travel to Europe, I take my quad band phone with me and buy a SIM card there which gives me free incoming calls and cheap outgoing calls. However, I recently got a Blackberry Pearl which I unlocked and I'll be taking with me to Munich and Prague. The Pearl has a lot of useful features if you have a data plan available, most notably google maps, which I'd love to have as I travel to a new place.

Are there SIM cards available that provide an affordable voice plan but also have an affordable data plan?

 

[DivideBYZero]

Try Tmo in Germany. They should do a Pay-as-you-go SIM with data. Not sure about Czech Republic though.

 

[brikis98]

is Tmo T-mobile?

 

[DivideBYZero]

Oops! Yeah. Industry speak...sorry!

 

[pm]

I'm going to Poland, and the Czech Republic, and I'm looking for pay-as-you-go-with-EDGE. I will be mostly in Poland, so I was thinking either Era or Plus. I've used Plus in the past in Poland, but I haven't tried EDGE on it. Anyway, I'll likely figure it out when I'm there, but I was planning on Plus... but I'd like to find a coverage map before I decide between Plus and Era.

I speak Polish conversationally, but I'm not sure I'll be able to talk cell phone data coverage with the natives. We'll see.

Let me know what you decide... I'll be in Prague for a week too. I'll be curious to know what you find out.

 

[brikis98]

Hm, so far, all the SIM cards I've found online have been quite a bit more expensive than I wanted to pay. An unlimited data plan on AT&T (hardly the cheapest of providers) in the US costs ~$30/month, so I was willing to pay that much to have a data plan for just 2 weeks in Europe...

however, from what i've seen, most of the SIM cards alone are around $50 and only come with $10 of "starter credit". depending on which you get, they also charge an outrageous amount for the data transfer: $0.50 to connect, and then $1-$10 per megabyte. Some are cheaper in one country, but a total ripoff in the other. As I'd be using it sporadically to check email and use google maps, I'd be racking up some massive charges, and it just doesn't seem worth it. Maybe the cards they offer in kiosks are more affordable...

 

[pm]

I did a bunch of research on this last night and decided I'll use iPlus "simdata". They have EDGE everywhere that I'm planning on going. and UMTS in a lot of the places too... it's a little weird when smaller cities in Poland - like Lomja - have UMTS and much larger cities in the US don't.

I decided on:
http://www.english.iplus.pl/en_priceplans_simdata.html

I don't think this will help you with the Germany/Czech Republic, but I think I'm set on what I'll ask for when I get there. I leave in about 5 weeks.

The weak dollar makes life expensive - I'm expecting everything to be expensive this time around. The plane ticket alone was about 50% more than we usually pay.