Hmmm, my SIM plans seem to have been scuttled. I'm spending three weeks in Italy (mostly), with a bit in Switzerland and France. At the front and end of my flight to Europe is two days in London. Are there any SIM cards out there that are reasonable to use in both England and mainland Europe?
Just looking for a good chunk of data, texting and phoning aren't important.
If phoning is not important, you might want to consider an eSIM data plan. Many members here have been using them all over Europe and they are great for travel. I used one from Airalo for a month-long stay in Germany and had zero problems. The cost was around €20 for 30 days for 10Gb of data, which was more than I needed.
Others here have used an Orange eSIM plan, which is helpful if you want calling (although it's a French phone number), and have had good luck with those. There is also Honafly, which gets good reviews, although it's a bit pricier.
Some things to be aware of - your phone must be unlocked to use eSIM plans and it must be a newer phone (from late 2017 on). The beauty of eSIMs is that there is no physical SIM card - you just download the eSIM from the supplier, activate it, follow the instructions and you're all set.
You can find a lot more information on the Technology Tips forum, including this one to start you off: https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/tech-tips/buying-an-international-esim-data-plan-for-your-regular-phone-with-esim-no-more-burner-phones
I bought a SIM card and pay as you go pack from EE last year. Worked fine throughout Scotland and London. I noticed they still allow no added cost roaming to much or the EU. Scroll down to the good to know section to see the list of countries.
https://shop.ee.co.uk/plans-and-packs/pay-as-you-go-packs
Plan pricing details are here
I think you're wise to get a sim card in the UK. Just be sure to ask if it covers Europe. May 2022 we purchased sim cards from Tesco, I believe these were actual tesco cards, but the store sells many different cards so just be clear that you want Europe covered. Ours was covered and it worked great. We spent a week in England then 2.5 weeks in Italy (Sicily, Naples and Rome) and never had a problem, we had great service throughout. The sim cards were 5 GBP then we paid 10GBP for the data service(might have breakdown wrong but definitely total was 15gbp per phone for more data than we could ever use) . We had the person at Tesco set us up but we did the same thing in September and she showed me how to do it on one phone then I did it on the second phone, fairly straight forward. When you drop in the new sim card you then text a number provided and enter the code from the receipt for the top up service.
We had family members who got several different sim cards in Italy (vodafone, tim, another one in Sicily that I can't remember) and none of them paid as little as we did. All of the phones worked equally well. I can't remember if there was a restriction on regular phone calls in Italy but almost everyone we dealt with uses whatsapp so it shouldn't matter too much.
When we travel to Italy in March 2023, we won't be so fortunate to go through England first, so I guess we'll just pay a little more and get one at the airport or termini in Rome. It's not a huge difference in cost, I think most of our family paid between 20-35 euro for their sim cards. One note of warning though, I found that when asking at each place for the cheapest price, if the price sounded higher than I wanted, I kept asking isn't there something less, and usually there was. It's not that they're trying to rip you off, they just think you want a higher plan than you need.
Good luck.
Ohhh, thanx Rocket! We used EE in 2019, worked mostly great.
I hadn't found any company that didn't charge extra for going to mainland Europe so assumed it was like that with them all. Now just crossing my fingers that EE stays the same until March!
Are you getting your sim in Italy? If so, ask the list of foreign countries where you can use the sim without going negative and blocking it.
"All over Europe" actually means "all over the E.U."
Switzerland and UK must be clearly mentioned, otherwise you will pay per minute/text/giga.
PS 15 GBP is a great price, The cheapest Italian one costs 20 € for the first month.
I have T-mobile and data is free there - only 3G, last time I was there.
I use Telegram to make data phone calls and it worked well.
