Phone / Internet on the way

For us its important to be connected to the rest of the world, at least from time to time. Most important is to have access to wheather forecasts, but also to stay in contact with family and friends, – and sometimes even to work.

EU Internet + phone:

Since several months we use a special offer of the Italian provider ‘Tre’. We pay 20 EUR for 30 days and get 1 GB internet plus gratis minutes for calls, – that’s valid for all EU countries. Thus we don’t have to buy a new Sim card when changing the country, at least as long as we stay within the EU. Infos are under www.Tre.it

In former times we bought a SIM card in every country (either a phone-internet-combi card or a card for each, depending on the offer). Import is that you tell whether you want to use a hotspot or not, if yes sometimes there are special settings to do otherwise the bought GBs are gone within a few days, – or you won’t manage to create a hotspot. Best is to tell the seller that he shall do the settings….

In the following, we state our experiences in the countries we’ve been so far. We will update the list from time to time, but please be aware that things change all the time:

Turkey:

Phone-Internet combi card from Turkcell, costs per month approx.20 EUR (years 2014 + 2015) including 4 GB data volumne and 100 minutes free for calls within Turkey, valid for 30 days from activation date. The 4 GB were almost always sufficient for us despite we worked with a hotspot, thus operated from various devices. The drawback in Turkey is, that you need to register your handy if you stay more than 30 days, – they like to control everything…. The costs for registrations are around 40 EUR.

Greece:

We learnt that a combi sim-card was not good for our purposes as none was available with enough data volumne, e.g. max.of 1,5 GB for 30 days, – please refer also to our September report: News September-30-2015. That’s why we finally bought a separat sim-card for internet. We paid 25 EUR (year 2015) for 5 GB including the costs for the sim-card, the far to expensive bought combi sim-card was finally used for calls only.

Italy:

For 35 EUR (year 2015) WIND offered a sim card with 5 GB and 100 free minutes within Italy, the one-time costs for the sim card of 10 EUR were included. Attention: the offer of Vodafone does not allow to create a hotspot with the phone.

Malta:

GO Mobile offered a sim card for 10 EUR with 1 GB, which was rather soon empty. The next time we bought 6 GB for 20 EUR, which was more attractive although still very slow.