Good mobile phone plan for traveller

Read here: https://www.ricksteves.com/travel-tips/phones-tech

For Europe, I use WiFi when available and once signed on for a basic international calling plan through my carrier, which worked well but I utilized it sparingly as it was expensive.

"I have heard local connections are generally cheaper than activating international roaming in our current connections. What do you guys feel? "

Everyone has different needs. So, in order to figure out what's best for you, you need to decide what you want. You also need to check your current plan to see what it will cost to use in Europe and what you get for that cost. Only then can you decide. And finally, what's available, both in the US and in Spain, changes all the time.

Will you want data, calls, text? If calls, back home to the US, within Spain, or to somewhere else? Can you make do just with hotel Wi-Fi, or will you want data access when out and about? Do you anticipate using a lot of data or just a little? Will people from the US need to reach you easily? All of these factors, and more, influence which is the "best" way to go for you.

First, see what your current plan offers; it may be enough. For instance, I have T-Mobile Simple Choice (no longer available to new customers). On that plan when I travel to Spain, I get free texts, free data (only 2G speeds guaranteed, but they can often be faster) and calls at $0.20 per minute when on the cellular network and free when on Wi-Fi.

Many, but not all, T-Mobile plans have a similar deal, as do many Sprint plans. AT&T and Verizon don't have such deals, and they can indeed be very expensive.

If you don't like what your carrier offers, look into plans available in Spain. More information can be obtained from the Prepaid GSM Spain forum. But beware that it can get VERY technical, so don't be afraid to ask for clarification: http://www.prepaidgsm.net/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=33

Thanks a lot for your in-depth reply, Harold. Sorry for the delayed reply, I missed the notification for this.
I am in India, not US. The connection I am using here isn't a good option to use for international roaming.
Yes, I would mostly use it for calls to home and a lot of mobile data.

I have heard of a few connection and was wondering about the reliability of these connections. How are Lycamobile sims? One of my ex-colleagues mentioned about their good data plans.

@zoepeeters, do you really need to make calls home ? Could you use emails (using free WiFi in your hotel)? (Advantage of email -- you get to complete your message on your own time and the recipient can read it on his/her time.)
Similarly, if you can limit your time for postings to social media and research to when you're connected to free WiFi, you may be able to avoid needing international roaming at all.

SIM cards are so cheap - It seems silly not to buy one if you would need one at all. WiFi just isn't good enough if you are trying to get on-the-spot walking directions or public transit directions with your phone.

We're using SIM cards in Spain. We also needed one for Italy. The Italy SIM is working well for data in Spain. ATT is $10 for data per day. SIM is a better deal for anything over 3 days.

We had a Vodaphone sim card for 20€ that included 60 minutes of calling and 7GB of data. Worked fine for three week trip. Make sure you use whatsapp. Text only worked in Vodaphone network.

My preference is to use the International Day Pass offered by my US carrier AT&T. Most of my flights to Europe are rarely direct (also true of my flights to Asia). Sometimes I want to be able to check status of my connecting flights, send email/texts, post to FB or IG, etc. during my layovers (usually Canada). And I like having data, text and voice as soon as the plane touches down in Europe. It costs $10/day - it's a trade off between cost and convenience.

I used to buy SIM cards at my destination. But I found SIM cards were sometimes hit-or-miss OR I needed data ASAP (e.g. to tell the hotel I was delayed). If I needed the Internet at airport right away, WiFis were not alway free and I was basically paying around $20 (after the currency conversion and fees) for a day pass in an airport where I would be spending no more than 4 hours tops.

SIM cards at the airport are expensive. So are SIM cards in popular tourist spots. And it can mean you are incommunicado between the airport and the store. This for me is bad because I tend to get lost and I need Google Maps or other apps to help me navigate a new city.

It's also happened to me before that the SIM seller doesn't really know how to activate the card, has sold me the wrong card, etc. It can be frustrating and costly. One one trip the SIM failed without my knowing. I still had data because my phone picked up the local signal. But that network charged me more than $25 for just a fraction of the day.

I just find having my day pass convenient and less prone to surprise charges. Plus I'm ready to explore the moment I step out of the airport.

When we visited Spain last month, my wife and I both bought Vodafone SIM cards; each one gave us 4GB of data and 50 minutes talk time for 20 euros. This was incredibly perfect, because it let us use our phones for local data and email and stuff like that without having to worry about overages. If we needed to call back to the States, we went to our hotel room, where WiFi was free, and used Skype.

Now, we found that Vodafone coverage is not uniform; our reception sucked in parts of Barcelona. But overall, it was money well spent, and I feel comfortable recommending it to you.

don't SIM cards only work if you have an unlocked phone? (I may be technologically ignorant about how this works.)

we used the Skyroam mobile wifi and found it was just what we needed. For calls we used WhatsApp.

I recently got T-MOBILE's 55+ Unlimited which has 2 lines for $60/mo. It includes overseas calling (20 cents,/min), free texting, free email and data roaming. I've had great success with all of this but the data speed can be frustratingly slow. Google maps work great on the data speed I've had which has been a big help.

I've had mixed experiences with European SIM cards and I am much happier with TMobile especially since it's cheaper than my previous cell plan. It works great in the US.

Yes, T-Mobile's 55+ plan is a great deal - if you need two lines. If not, it's not a good deal.

What kind of phone did you use in Europe with T-Mobile? Not all phones have the right frequencies to connect to the fastest data networks in Europe, even if they can in the US. With T-Mobile, your phone should connect to the fastest network available wherever you are, but if your phone doesn't have the right frequencies, the fastest may be a slow 2G "Edge" network which would be frustratingly slow to use much of the time. T-Mobile does otherwise throttle your speed to 2G but that may not always be noticeable unless you consume a lot of data, at least in my experience - but connected to a 4G network that may be a lot faster than connecting to an "Edge" network.

Yes, your phone must be unlocked to use another SIM. But your carrier should unlock it, at least if you are from the US, unless you are still paying for the phone - think AT&T. Verizon does not lock their phones anymore.

I used T-mobile on both of my recent trips (France, Spain, Portugal, Italy) - worked great. They're part of deutsche telekom.

My companion had the 'European plan' from Verizon; didn't work at all.

T-Mobile limits speeds in Europe to 128 kbps. You can buy a "plus" package for $25 per month that raises this to 256 kbps. I've found the speed to be acceptable.

SIM cards work only in an unlocked phone, which I learned to the tune of 15 £ lesson this summer. Verison phone, locked. It will cost $100 to unlock it, too, so i will be switching off of Verison soon. They find every way to charge you more and more.

Paul, Verizon does not lock their post-paid phones anymore, at least their 4GLTE phones. Verizon isn't allowed to lock their 4GLTE phones due to agreement with the FCC over their use of the 4G frequencies. It could be you have a very old phone or a prepaid phone?

http://www.verizon.com/about/consumer-safety/device-unlocking-policy

What kind of phone did you use in Europe with T-Mobile?

We have Moto g4 phones. They are pretty cheap but do everything we need. One feature that they don't have that some may find useful is internet calling. When we bought them, we got unlocked phones planning to get SIM cards when in Europe. I've not been real happy with SIM cards. I could never get the data to work right.

With the T-Mobile plan we had no problem with making calls. Texting was great except when we were sending pictures. There we had to wait a little bit for things to load/unload. Data varied with sometimes great LTE speed and other times 2G. We always were able to get Google Maps to work which was very helpful stumbling the back streets of many Spanish cities.

We have T-Mobile in the USA.
Just returned from 3 weeks in Portugal.
Total extra charges for 2 phones were $17 USD.
All of that was for voice. Text and data were free.
$6 of the voice was for a 30 minute to TAP (their website sucks) to make seat reservations for the return trip.

We were/are very satisfied as our phones worked immediately upon landing.

Ken:

We have Moto g4 phones. They are pretty cheap but do everything we need. One feature that they don't have that some may find useful is internet calling. When we bought them, we got unlocked phones planning to get SIM cards when in Europe. I've not been real happy with SIM cards. I could never get the data to work right.

Well, the G4 should be a decent phone - I've been very happy with my cheaper and slower Moto E (I have the "international version" for traveling in Europe). If you were connecting to LTE networks and still finding the data super slow, then maybe T-Mobile really has slowed down their data - it sure wasn't that slow in May of 2016 when I was using it. (They had a summer promo for unlimited data in 2016 but that was after my trip.)

I'm not sure what kind of problem you've had with the SIM cards. On my ancient Android phone, with a European SIM card, I had to set the APN for specific providers to get data to work - agents at mobile phone stores can usually figure this out. They did for me. My newer Moto E (Android 5) automatically figured out the APN for my Dutch Vodafone SIM - I put the SIM in and everything just worked.

FYI, if you want to make free calls to the US on WiFi, try Google Hangouts. It's basically the same thing as WiFi calling, except that you can't use your T-Mobile number (so if you call someone who has your T-Mobile number in their contacts, they won't know it's you; some might not answer). Google Hangouts lets you call US phones for free, even landlines. I used it when I had T-Mobile even when not on WiFi, just to save the 20 cents/minute.

I always get a sim card for my IPhone - usually at the telephone shop om the lower level of the train station. Last time I was there - several months ago - I got a plan from LeBara Movil. It cost 20 euro and gave me 400 minutes voice back to the USA, as well as 2GB of data. Both were more than enough for my four weeks in country. They even installed and uninstalled the chip for me.