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Best Cell plans for 2 weeks in Netherlands and Norway?

While in Switzerland and France for 3 weeks last year our family got a combination of cell plans which for the most part, worked well for us. The plans consisted of...

2 "kids" plans (if I can recall correctly) had something like 500mbs of data, calls and texts were 10 cents each and the plan was good for 30 days and cost only $10 each. Perfect for stating in touch when we got separated.

We also got a prepaid plan that had something like 150 minutes of calls and 150 texts and 20GBs of non throttled data on my wife’s prepaid sim which we used as a hot spot for all our phones and laptops and cost about $30.

Finally we got a 20gb Orange sim from amazon before we left which we never got to work correctly with any of our modern Galaxy S phones and was a complete waste of $40.

This July we will be in Amsterdam for a little over 1 week and then in Norway for a little over 1 week. We would like to find 2 types of plans which work similarly for our group of 9....
One type of plan which is primarily for quick calls and texts with light data use for map search’s.

And another plan which has 20+ GB of data (that is not throttled!) and can be used as a hotspot for the others in the group when hotel and train internet is slow. This needs to be a high quality/speed provider as we need this connection for video calls and large down/uploads (i.e. work)

Which plan(s)/sim(s)/or esim(s) would be best for our 2 types of plans we desire?

Note: I have read elsewhere that most plans in Europe (Yes, Norway being a partner not a member) are now have free roaming which makes me think maybe one or more of the Netherland plans will work in Norway, thus we would not need to get new sims when land in Norway.

One last thing - We have friends from London who are joining us on this trip so if there is a UK plan that is better we could have them set these up for us (assuming they don't need our phones in hand) if that provides a better option.

Posted by
60 posts

Our phones are eSIM capable and we've had good luck with Airalo although there are many other providers and plans listed in https://esimdb.com/

Not all offer local numbers for voice but we have discovered that our US carrier's WiFi Calling feature works using the data provided by the second SIM so that we can communicate with our US phone numbers! Read up on it before you go because the set up varies by phone.

Posted by
38 posts

I have also used Airalo for eSIM access for data. iPhone 11 or later models work with an eSIM; unsure about Android.
This trip I have T-Mobile Magenta 55+ so get 5 GB roaming, can use my number, etc. SUPER EASY. Worked in the UK, Netherlands, and the next western European countries I'm visiting. I have some friends who bring an old phone and use that with a SIM they purchase in the country they're visiting.

Posted by
28055 posts

Be cautious about counting on a UK SIM. Since Brexit, you're less likely to get free roaming on the continent.