SIM question again

2934 Views 85 Replies 13 Participants Last post by wfdTamar, 6 mo ago

jiwawa

Discussion Starter · 7 mo ago

My contract with Vodafone runs out next week - unfortunately a week before I get home.

I don't want to renew with them because of their charges for roaming (£2/day or, if you buy an 8- or 15-day pass, £1/day)

However, I have found Voda reception in France, Spain and Portugal generally quite good so I'm looking at going with someone who uses Voda as a carrier. Talkmobile is one, and there's an offer of 100GB and unlimited calls n texts (which is what I have ATM) for £7.95/mth for 12 months (after cashback.

It includes free roaming (tho I've just realised I don't know what their reasonable usage policy is...) and WiFi calling tho that's generally no use to me cos my mobile data IS my WiFi at home as well as on the move.

I generally use in the region of 30GB at home (obviously less that 25 when away) so I don't NEED the 100GB but, bizarrely, it's the cheapest!

Does anyone have experience with talkmobile? Specifically, is its performance on a par with Vodafone?

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barryd

· #13 · 7 mo ago

Webby1 said:
There is some good general info about EU sims HERE
We have 3 as our main sim at home but it only allows 12gb abroad.(no daily charge as our contract was in July 2022)But that will change next year. Now with various campsite wi fi that 12gb might be enough.

Very positive reviews of the Tiekom deal but they charge €15 to send sims to UK. But you can park the sim unused for €3 month.

So the front runner for me is the Popit deal.Not seen any reviews as yet so a bit new and untested.I expect good/reasonable reception if it uses the EE network. Also it can be started in UK and then presumably allow UK TV streaming. I presume you can just cancel when not needed and then get a new sim.But their customer service is good so they might respond to the "parking option"

I would be interested if anyone has used the Popit or seen any reviews about it.

That Spanish Vodafone SIM deal discussed in the Comments from Tiekom sounds good especially as they will send to the UK and activate it while in the UK. If it uses all the providers UK vodafone does across France etc then it will be brilliant. People seem to forget that its not just getting a good deal on paper, it needs to have the coverage and Vodafone IMO throughout Europe has always been very good because of the number of providers it piggy backs.

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barryd

· #15 · 7 mo ago

No not really. I used an EE sim on Arran and the lake District this year because Vodafone was poor where we were but that's about it. Always been on Vodafone only.

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barryd

· #18 · 7 mo ago

Wall1955 said:
Used the Tiekom 300gb deal throughout France, Spain and Portugal btwn late August and 09 October. Their Customer service was absolutely excellent, and it cost €15 to express deliver the 3 sims I requested to UK. I used it in a tp link mifi which gave great coverage and very good signal, to be honest it was faultless. I requested 3 sims to ensure some backup cover however only needed one which I have now requested Tiekom to ‘park’ at a cost of €3 per month which will allow me to reactivate for my next trip. Great deal for me, as said excellent coverage and no worries about fair use policy etc. or needing to be careful with how much data I was using.

Thanks

Sounds like a good solution.

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barryd

· #22 · 7 mo ago

raynipper said:
Yes Peter, my French one is 40GB for €8.99 but only in France. It's only 4GB outside France but more than I ever need.

Ray.

How is that the case Ray as France is still in the EU? I thought you could use your EU full roaming allowance across all EU countries since 2017.

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barryd

· #32 · 7 mo ago

The trouble is a few years ago 12gb would have been enough for most people for a month. I can remember about a decade ago or so when Vodafone did their Data Traveller service it was £10 extra for 25mb a day data!! We thought it was great! It was enough to check emails and search the odd thing but before that we really had nothing. Fast forward to 2022 and you would use up 25mb just opening a news page there is so much junk on them. Nobody bothers to render images for the internet anymore like they did in the olden days as they assume everyone is on a superfast connection with unlimited data. So your 12gb will soon get scoffed, especially if you start watching streaming services which again are much more high quality so consume more data. We were doing 15gb a day at the back end of our last trip on some days.

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barryd

· #39 · 7 mo ago

Glandwr said:
I can remember those days when you used to watch every Meg. Just remembered also that when old Shep was a pup and I was accessing via mobile that in order to my minimise my data usage I downloaded, installed and used Opera as my default browser.

Looks like it can still CONSIDERABLY reduce your data usage. Possibly even enough to convince a provider that you had cut down your usage abroad enough to comply with their fair usage policy? Especially if you only used it abroad.

I see that they also offer their own integrated VPN service.

How to shrink your mobile data usage with Opera Mini

Opera Mini browser can save you 90 MB in mobile data usage per month. Find out how it works to help you use those extra megabytes better.

blogs.opera.com

Opera Web Browser | Faster, Safer, Smarter | Opera

Faster, safer and smarter than default browsers. Fully-featured for privacy, security, and so much more. Get the faster, better Opera browser for free.

www.opera.com

Yes I still use Opera occasionally, mainly for its free VPN for Torrent sites. Ive not tended to worry about data anymore in the UK at least but I wish I had remembered in the lakes a few weeks ago as we were on an EE Sim with just 40gb as there was no signal in a couple of places we went and Mrs D hammered it by leaving a load of video stuff open all the time. I think we were down to our last GB the day we left.

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barryd

· #41 · 7 mo ago

jiwawa said:
Opera says it can save you 90MB a month. It's something, yes, but isn't really going to make any difference, is it? I have it up years ago cos it was slow.

I always thought it compressed pages by 90% so it should be way more than that but I must admit Ive not tested it for many years. Maybe those figures are out of date. Its from 2016

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barryd

· #45 · 7 mo ago

Pudsey_Bear said:
Worth a look for use on the phone, if I use my phone as a hotspot so would it still work and do I use it via the phone or the laptop.

You would have to have it on which ever machine you are using to browse. So if the phone is the hot spot and your using it on the laptop you need opera on the laptop. Whether it still saves a chunk of data remains to be seen but years ago when I had it on my phone it certainly did.

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barryd

· #47 · 7 mo ago

Pudsey_Bear said:
Ah as I thunk I suppose the test is how much it use on Opera V Chrom for the same down load, not sure how one would qauntify it though.

I doubt downloads will make any difference as in downloading files etc. I think it's rendering web pages on the fly when browsing. I suspect these days most peoples usage will massively be streaming or downloading programs. The only way you can reduce data usage for streaming is to reduce the quality / Resolution. Most sites don't give you this option. YouTube does. Don't know if Opera would have any ability to do this on a stream.

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barryd

· #53 · 7 mo ago

I always found Opera mini slightly slower than Chrome but then if its compressing data before it displays it then perhaps thats why.

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