Charles Liebert - Le Dernier Bon Samaritain

“

A wiki for prepaid (iPhone compatible) SIM cards around the world

Here's what this wiki is about:

This wiki aims to collect information about pay as you go mobile phone plans from all over the world. Not just any plans though, they must include decent data rates, perfect for iPhone and Android smart phone travellers.

 Pay as you go providers with data by country (A-Z)

• Australia
• Austria
• Belgium
• Bosnia and Herzegovina
• Brazil
• Canada
• Czech Republic
• Estonia
• Finland
• France
• Germany
• Hong Kong
• Ireland (Republic of)
• Israel
• Italy
• Mexico
• The Netherlands
• New Zealand
• Philippines
• Poland
• Portugal
• Romania
• Saudi Arabia
• Singapore
• South Africa
• Spain
• Sri Lanka
• Sweden
• Slovenia
• Switzerland
• Thailand
• UK
• USA

---

Pay as you go

Pay as you go, also known as prepaid allows a customer to get mobile access without signing up for a long term plan. This makes it perfect for a person who is only visiting a country for a short time. To complicate matters a bit, the popularity of phones such as the iPhone has led to another requirement on the pay as you go plans: data. In order to be able to use the phones as intended, with internet access, you need to get a plan with decent data rates.

More information

SIM card

When you purchase a pay as you go plan you are given a SIM card to be inserted into your phone. Commonly in the mini size, but with the introduction of the iPad and iPhone 4 some providers also stock micro SIM's.

It's possible to cut a mini SIM into a micro SIM, and there are special punches available from cutmysim.com .

More information

SIM lock

It is not uncommon that a phone purchased together with a plan is SIM locked to that particular provider. This means that when you go abroad and try to use a foreign SIM card it will not work. We will not provide information on how to unlock you phone in this wiki, there are other resources out there that already tell you how.

Data bolt-ons

Bolt-ons, boosters and features are all the same name for when you pay a fixed sum for an extra feature on top of you pay as you go plan. It is commonly how you get decent data rates. You pay a fixed sum for a certain number of megabytes, once they expire you pay the normal, usually quite high, rates.

Roaming

Roaming is when you keep using your plan from your country of origin abroad. It is usually VERY expensive to do so, cases where users come home to a bill that eat up a month's salary or more is not uncommon. The cure is to use a local pay as you go SIM card instead.

Can't find a good data rate?

Some destinations have exorbitant pay as you go data rates. So, you might end up relying on WiFi hotspots but still want a local number for making and receiving voice calls. PrePaidGSM lists payg sims for almost every country in the World.

”