Prepaid SIM with data



Here's what this wiki is about: This wiki collects information about prepaid mobile phone plans from all over the world. Not just any plans though, they must include decent data rates, perfect for iPhone, iPad and Android smart phone travellers, as well as mifi users.

Prepaid providers with data by country (A-Z)

 * All countries
 * Albania
 * Andorra
 * Argentina
 * Armenia
 * Australia
 * Austria
 * Belarus
 * Belgium
 * Bosnia and Herzegovina
 * Botswana
 * Brazil
 * Bulgaria
 * Cambodia
 * Canada
 * Cape Verde Islands
 * Cayman Islands
 * Colombia
 * Croatia
 * Chile
 * China
 * Cyprus
 * Czech Republic
 * Denmark
 * Ecuador
 * Egypt
 * El Salvador
 * England (see UK)
 * Estonia
 * Finland
 * Faroe Islands
 * France
 * Georgia
 * Germany
 * Ghana
 * Greece
 * Hong Kong
 * Hungary
 * Iceland
 * India
 * Indonesia
 * Ireland_(Republic_of)
 * Iran
 * Iraq
 * Isle of Man
 * Israel
 * Italy
 * Japan
 * Jordan
 * Kenya
 * Kyrgyzstan
 * Latvia
 * Liechtenstein
 * Lithuania
 * Luxembourg
 * Macedonia
 * Malawi
 * Malaysia
 * Maledives
 * Malta
 * Mauritius
 * Mexico
 * Moldova
 * Montenegro
 * Morocco
 * Namibia
 * Nepal
 * The Netherlands
 * New Zealand
 * Nicaragua
 * Norway
 * Oman
 * Pakistan
 * Philippines
 * Poland
 * Portugal
 * Qatar
 * Romania
 * Russia
 * Rwanda
 * San Marino
 * Saudi Arabia
 * Scotland (see UK)
 * Senegal
 * Serbia
 * Singapore
 * Slovakia
 * Slovenia
 * South_Africa
 * South Korea
 * Spain
 * Sri Lanka
 * Sweden
 * Switzerland
 * Syria
 * Taiwan
 * Tanzania
 * Tunisia
 * Thailand
 * Turkey
 * Uganda
 * UK
 * Ukraine
 * United Arab Emirates
 * USA
 * Vietnam

Prepaid
Prepaid, also known as Pay as you go 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 smartphones has led to another requirement on the prepaid 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 prepaid plan you are given a SIM card to be inserted into your phone. Commonly in the mini size, but with the introduction of iPad, iPhone 4 and iPhone 5 most providers also stock micro-SIMs and nano-SIMs.

It's possible to cut a mini SIM into a micro SIM, and there are special punches available from cutmysim.com or eBay (search for sim cutter). More information

Phones Network Support
To check if your phone supports the network of a provider, you can look here: Network Compatibility of common phones

Phone 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 your phone in this wiki, there are other resources out there that already tell you how.

An important note about charges
Watch out! You may incur some charges almost immediately after you insert (and activate/unlock if necessary) your SIM. For example, email might try to download in the background once your phone has a data connection, and will be charged at the standard per MB rate. This can be a problem if you buy a SIM with e.g. 10 € credit and try to activate a data package costing 9.95 €. Probably best to close all apps on your handset before inserting the new SIM, and/or completely turn off mobile data. Also iPhone users should disable FaceTime since this seems to send a "hidden" SMS to a UK number 00447786205094 when the SIM is changed. (It apparently does this to register the phone number with the FaceTime servers.) More information on FaceTime's hidden SMS (Google).

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 your prepaid 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 prepaid SIM card instead.

Can't find a good data rate?
Some destinations have exorbitant prepaid 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 prepaid sims for almost every country in the World.

What network settings do I need to enter?
Unfortunately, sometimes it won't be enough to simply put the SIM card in your device and expect it to work: it needs to log in to the network. You will need three pieces of information: APN, Payment Service Provider and password. It should be ideally on the operator description page in this wiki, but if it's not try finding in here and if it works, copy it to operator description page in this wiki.

iPhone says "You Are Not Subscribed to a Cellular Data Service"
The only known reason for this are incorrect APN/username/password. See "What network settings do I need to enter?" above for instructions on how to fix it.

Contributing to the wiki
A couple of simple guidelines to editing the wiki.



 