Traveling in Europe, sim card required.

[Igotnothing]

Admittedly, I'm not traveling till August, i'm just doing my best to plan it out well in advance. The plan is to land in Amsterdam, spend a few days there, then to Paris and spend some days there, finishing in London.

Given my lack of Dutch and French, I'd like to have my phone handy for maps and everything else you use a smart phone. Is there a sim card I can get for my 2.5 weeks in Europe/UK that will cover all three? Of more importance is having a sim card while in Europe. Thanks

[skudr248]

Unlock your phone, get a sim card there from places like Vodafone/Orange/small kiosks etc. Just walk in, tell them you want data only etc, super easy and cheap (everyone speaks English). Got like 10gigs for $10 euros or something in Croatia.. you will find phone shops all around

Also, download map.me app on your phone, download the maps of countries you're going to in the mean time.

[worth]

+1 for maps.me

[FurnaceFace]

If you just want data another option is keepgo. The sim cards are reloadable and usable in a large number of countries. If you travel frequently it's quite useful.

If this is just a one and done trip then like mentioned above Orange/Vodafone is a good option. Stay away from cheaper options like Labera. They are equivalent to what Wind was like here with spotty coverage and slow speeds.

[Igotnothing]

Thanks for the information. It'll be a one of trip so I'll hit up vodaphone/orange as suggested and grab the app mentioned. Fortunately my phone was bought unlocked.

[Temporary_User]

The EU made an agreement back in June that all SIM cards must work across the EU with no roaming fees. All providers are now coming up to these standards. Most came onboard right away

Just pick up a SIM when you land (probably at the airport) and you should be good to go. Make sure you test it before leaving the store in case that country puts certain steps in place.

Also get maps.me, but google maps is still better for public transport.

[Fuzz]

I use maps.me and Google Maps offline when I travel. With Google, just zoom in to where you will be going, and you can select from the left side to download offline.

[Huntingwhale]

Originally Posted by Temporary_User

The EU made an agreement back in June that all SIM cards must work across the EU with no roaming fees. All providers are now coming up to these standards. Most came onboard right away

Just pick up a SIM when you land (probably at the airport) and you should be good to go. Make sure you test it before leaving the store in case that country puts certain steps in place.

Also get maps.me, but google maps is still better for public transport.

I was in Europe last summer and my SIM card I bought in Poland did work from country to country, with the exception of Germany. I hadn't heard about the EU legislation of SIM cards working in all EU countries like that. Amazing. I'm going back in 1.5 months and that would be so awesome if it was like that across the board now.

Just goes to show how shameful the Canadian telecommunications industry is and that the government allows them to continue to gouge customers. One of my best memories is getting 35 GB of data for $15 in Poland. And then to come back here to enjoy my crappy 1GB data plan for quadruple the price. #### the big 3.

[Jimmy Stang]

Semi-related question:

I'll be travelling in the summer (Italy), have an unlocked phone, and know I can get a sim and data plan at Wind, Tim, Vodofone, wherever.

What I would like to do is somehow keep my existing phone number working to some degree. I am on iOS, and my phone is NOT dual sim.

For phone calls and voice messages, I plan to forward calls to my Canadian cell number to a Fongo number, which is a free service that lets you get a Canadian internet phone number. Fongo also does free long distance within Canada, wherever you are in the world. But who receives phone calls these days, anyway?

For text messaging, Fido used to have an included service called "Extreme Text Messaging" which allowed you to forward texts to a different number, or send them to you as an email. Of course, they have discontinued it.

iMessage is obviously handy as it sends over an internet connection, but once I pop out my Canadian sim, my phone number will not be registered with iMessage as my new, Italian one will be.

I have an old iPhone 4s that isn't being used, so I am thinking that I might put my Canadian sim in that one, leave it plugged in at home in Canada, enable "text message forwarding" within iOS, and then when I get my Italian sim, I should have both phone numbers registered with iMessage, and SMS messages that go to my Canadian number should get forwarded, via iMessage, to all of my iOS devices, including my Italian sim. Two phones, two numbers, but in two different countries, all attached to one iMessage account.

To answer the obvious:
- Yes, I will be enjoying my holiday and won't be glued to my phone. But I'm a nerd and like to solve problems like this.
- No, I'm not so important that I have that many people contacting me. Again - just thinking of ways to solve this minor problem.
- Yes, a dual-sim Android phone would be the easiest, but I'm invested and Apple has be by the short and curlies at the moment.

So what do you think of my plan to stay connected to my voice and text messages, even after I have yanked out my Canadian sim? Anyone have any experience with this or have any better tips?

[ken0042]

When I was in the Philippines and had a local phone number- iMessages to my Canadian number came through just fine. I did have to change the "send new messages from" to my email address, so my friends stood a chance of recognizing the address.

[Jimmy Stang]

Originally Posted by ken0042

When I was in the Philippines and had a local phone number- iMessages to my Canadian number came through just fine. I did have to change the "send new messages from" to my email address, so my friends stood a chance of recognizing the address.

Good to know. Thanks! Seems that iMessage does not de-register the Canadian number unless it gets re-registered onto a different account.

And I'm guessing that plain old SMS just sat on the server until the Canadian sim was popped back in?

[ken0042]

I actually didn't have any plain SMS. I only have a couple of friends who don't have iPhones so they knew to use WhatsApp or Google's texting thing.

The one oddity I ran into- I bought a sim with 6 GB of data; no text or voice. When you get a new phone number, for iMessage to register it has to silently send out one SMS text to the iMessage servers. Once I found that out, I had to buy a text bundle for like $5 just to get it to work.

[DownhillGoat]

Originally Posted by ken0042

The one oddity I ran into- I bought a sim with 6 GB of data; no text or voice. When you get a new phone number, for iMessage to register it has to silently send out one SMS text to the iMessage servers. Once I found that out, I had to buy a text bundle for like $5 just to get it to work.

Really? I've done a data only sim twice with no hassle.

[ken0042]

Do you have your "send from" as your email address? If so, it wouldn't have to re-activate.
If you get an error when trying to activate iMessage

If you're using an iPhone, you need SMS messaging to activate your phone number with iMessage

Trust me- I wish I hadn't run into that. Next time I think I might change my "send from" to my email before I leave Canada.

[DownhillGoat]

Originally Posted by ken0042

Do you have your "send from" as your email address? If so, it wouldn't have to re-activate.
If you get an error when trying to activate iMessage

Yeah, I always have it set to email and phone number. When I went over seas IIRC I selected email and new number.