Best Finnish or other SIM for EU holiday

[daveba]

We are travelling to central Europe for a 15 days holiday and I was wondering if there are any good options for calling within EU. Saunalahti, our current provider says they have flat rates for both pre and post paid contracts. But I am looking for something where I can have a prepaid card that gives me some kind of bundle of minutes and data to use while roaming. Is such a thing possible or I'm dreaming? I googled it but didn't get anything promising. Thanks in advance.

[FinnGuyHelsinki]

I don't know about the "best" for your particular use, but there are international SIM car providers, e.g. http://www.mysims2go.com/ , http://www.gosim.com/ , http://www.onesimcard.com ,... with which you should be able to avoid outrageous roaming costs. I'll leave the more detailed price comparison to you.

[Beep_Boop]

I don't think I have an answer for you, but I can tell you that Saunalahti didn't work for me in Germany, Austria, Italy, Greece, and Turkey.
It worked in Sweden, Norway, Estonia, and UK.
So that's my experience.

[daveba]

Thanks Finnguy and Adnan. I will take a look at those you mentioned Finnguy.

[betelgeuse]

I don't know about the "best" for your particular use, but there are international SIM car providers, e.g. http://www.mysims2go.com/ , http://www.gosim.com/ , http://www.onesimcard.com ,... with which you should be able to avoid outrageous roaming costs. I'll leave the more detailed price comparison to you.

With the EU roaming price caps, excluding tons of data, the prices are not outrageous with a Finnish SIM card.

[Keravalainen]

Hi!
For those who call to and travel in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania a good subsciption (SIM card) seems to be the Finnish Sonera Sopiva. Both normal telephone calls and Internet usage are included in those countries in the calling package without extra charge - as if all of those are counted as "domestic" usage in Finland. This covers also calling to and between all these contries. This has worked for me fine.

[Rip]

With the EU roaming price caps, excluding tons of data, the prices are not outrageous with a Finnish SIM card.

If somebody knows a good price for data roaming, please share. Otherwise I'd suggest disabling it and just using WLAN when possible.

[zetorpilot]

I don't think I have an answer for you, but I can tell you that Saunalahti didn't work for me in Germany, Austria, Italy, Greece, and Turkey.
It worked in Sweden, Norway, Estonia, and UK.
So that's my experience.

I have Saunalahti, and it works fine - both calls and data roaming - for me in Germany and Austria, as well as all the other EU countries that I've tried it in. The only place where there is any difficulty is the UK, where I frequently need to manually switch between network operators as the various networks signal coverage seems to be very patchy there.

The cost is very reasonable these days. I use various message boards, instant messaging, email and FB (albeit with my browser set not to download and render images) pretty freely when abroad and I've never (yet!) had a nasty bill surprise

[Beep_Boop]

I have Saunalahti, and it works fine - both calls and data roaming - for me in Germany and Austria, as well as all the other EU countries that I've tried it in. The only place where there is any difficulty is the UK

This is odd. It's the exact opposite of my experience. In fact, this was the main reason why I wanted to switch away from pre-paid and get a subscription.

[Upphew]

I have Saunalahti, and it works fine - both calls and data roaming - for me in Germany and Austria, as well as all the other EU countries that I've tried it in. The only place where there is any difficulty is the UK

This is odd. It's the exact opposite of my experience. In fact, this was the main reason why I wanted to switch away from pre-paid and get a subscription.

zetorpilot didn't mention prepaid. Maybe that was the reason, not Saunalahti?

[betelgeuse]

With the EU roaming price caps, excluding tons of data, the prices are not outrageous with a Finnish SIM card.

If somebody knows a good price for data roaming, please share. Otherwise I'd suggest disabling it and just using WLAN when possible.

Usually the best price can be achieved with a hotspot capable device and a local SIM card. I have for example used an iPad for this purpose. Put a local sim card to the iPad, share the network connection over WLAN and disable data in the mobile phone. In some countries iDevices without jailbreaks are not idea because iOS can restrict tethering based on the bundled carrier database.

[zetorpilot]

Yes, mine isn't prepaid, it's a normal contract. Why would that make a difference though, surely Saunalahti's preferred roaming partners are the same in any case? Or is there a technical difference, in addition to the difference in how the bills are paid?

[riku2]

Or is there a technical difference, in addition to the difference in how the bills are paid?

yes there is a big technical difference. If you are outside the country then with prepaid the local operators system must contact saunalahti's system in finland to check that you have enough money. with monthly contract this isn't necessary (they trust that you'll eventually pay). This check must happen in well under a second. So this explains why prepaid roaming isn't available in all countries and is more likely to fail than postpaid even if it supposedly is setup.

[daveba]

Thanks all. We are hopping from country to country so buying a local sim from one country is not an option. I guess just using EU data (there is some kind of setting in my phone to switch this on) and normal calling would be fine with Saunalahti. We will anyway take the Satnav so no need for maps.

[Rip]

We will anyway take the Satnav so no need for maps.

You can actually (at least you can with my "formerly known as Nokia", presumably others too) download the maps in advance (at home), after which maps/navigation can be used also with data connections disabled (abroad). GPS is not based on mobile phone networks.