sim cards

Hi Barry

My younger brother who lives overseas in many places (currently in the Caribbean!) only ever travels with the one phone and when he is back her in Oz he puts in a prepaid Oz sim card. When he travels say to the UK - he buys a local sim card. This way you avoid the danger of huge bills from global roaming.

Hope this helps.

Barry,

Firstly, there is no advantage in buying and installing a pre-paid Aussie sim card to use overseas. The costs in using it would be compatible with a normal sim.

Secondly, I don't know of any pre-paid sim options that allow you use your own number.
Each pre-paid sim card has its own unique number.

Depending on the Country you are in, you may be able to buy a local sim card for use in that Country, but not always.
I investigated the purchase of a GSM sim card in Canada to use while I was travelling, but it was not compatible with the Aussie GSM iPhone. The card was not recognised by the phone.
This was with Rogers, one of the two largest telcos in Canada.

I just used my own phone with the Telstra sim card in and international dialing enabled, but only sparingly.
I found the cheapest form of communications was SMS messaging, which we used to keep our son up to speed of where we were and what we were doing.

You can purchase a European SIM card that works in most areas, the call rates and SMS rates are what I would call very reasonable, don't know about data for surfing the net or Skype/viber. The there are specific country sim cars, ie orange Italy, Spain etc and Vodafone Italy,Spain France etc...each card works only in the specific country and then changes to international roaming charges when you leave that country...just like our carriers here in aus. The rates for calls, local and international SMS are cheap, and data is cheap, I had cards in both Italy and Spain and the they cost about $30 or so each, both lasted for a couple of weeks. But used mostly for data, not so much calls...i didn't know anybody there! Best bet is wifi in the restaurants, hotels etc, it is generally free or small cost and do all of your calls home via viber, or Skype. You can take your aus SIM card with you, stop data roaming via the settings on your phone or contact your carrier, organise with your carrier overseas use so,that you can receive SMS from aus, these are reasonably cheap, check who is calling you before you answer because this will cost you heaps ....only answer the important ones,if you want to. Have a good look on Trip Advisor as they have great advice, I arrive back from a 7 week trip yesterday and this was my method. Cheers and have a great trip.

In answer to your question, I cant help because I havent tried such card either. I did investigate the various multicountry roaming simcards such as those from Auspost/Woolworths etc and found that their call rates are still quite high and their data (internet) rates very high compared to casual prepaid local sims in each country. Of course they are much cheaper than just using your normal aussie carrier sim overseas.

Another option is to take your aussie phone/sim plus another phone to use with a local sim. That way your call and data rates will be low and with judicious filtering you can keep your charges on your aussie phone contained.

I agree with the comment about checking the tripadvisor web site for the countries you are visiting. There is always lots of discussion on their forums about the best sims to use.

Allan

Boost will allow you to roam overseas and also keep your existing optus/telstra/vodafone etc number. Not sure of the charges though.

Best to get a SIM in each country though if you want to make a lot of calls.

try www.travelsim.net.au

Last night we had a half hour long video talk via Skype with my daughter, currently in Spain; the hostel had free Wi-Fi and she was connected via her iPhone. She remains in contact with us (and more importantly for her, her friends) via a mixture of Viber, Skype, Facebook, emails or SMS. She has become very adept at eating, drinking, staying or lounging in places with free Wi-Fi.

She has stated the only problem she has is occasionally the free Wi-Fi does not have the speed or bandwidth to support some programs. She was using Skype at midday in Madrid as the Hostel was empty. She continues to use her Australian SIM, mainly so we can contact her if need be. She may buy a cheap SIM or prepaid phone in the country where she spends some time to help look for work.