Not Enough Roaming Data? Buying a SIM Card Abroad in 2022
We’ve just bought a pre-paid SIM card in France for internet access, while we’re on holiday in our motorhome. We’ll quickly run through why we did that, what it cost us, and look at some hints and tips if you’re thinking of buying a pre-paid SIM card abroad too.
Example Prepaid Internet Offers in the EU
The easiest way to get internet access abroad is to take a UK-issued SIM card and ‘roam’ with it. Most UK suppliers will allow you to roam to the EU (and some other countries) using some or all of your UK allowance. Some charge a fee for each day the SIM is used abroad. Most cap the amount of data you can use, typically to 25GB a month, although a couple we know of allow 100GB to be used. If you need more than this, some UK suppliers will sell you additional data, but this can start to get expensive and not every supplier offers this option.
Another route is to buy a ‘local’ SIM card, as we just did, popping into a Free Mobile shop outside Caen in France. This can get you a lot more data for your money, although it comes with a bit more hassle! The table below gives a few examples of pre-paid offers in France, Spain, Portugal & Germany. These are all pay-monthly with no contract and are available to UK customers, with no need for a foreign credit card or address abroad. Not all countries have these high data volume, pre-paid monthly offers available. In some you’ll be better off paying for multiple UK SIM cards if you need over 25GB (or so) a month.
| Country | Supplier | Deal Name | Data/Month | Cost/Month | Notes |
| France | Free Mobile | Forfait Free | 210GB | €19.99 | SIM costs one-off €10. Data runs until the monthly anniversary of activation. |
| France | Réglo Mobile | Forfaits Réglo | 150GB | €19.95 | SIM costs one-off €10. Data runs to the end of the calendar month. |
| Spain | Vodafone | Vodafone prepago XXL | 150GB | €40 | SIM costs one-off €10. |
| Spain | Másmóvil | 120GB | €20 | SIM costs one-off €10. | |
| Portugal | Vodafone | Go Total | Unlimited | €30 | Can’t be used outside Portugal. May be throttled when over 200GB a month. |
| Germany | O₂ | O₂ Unlimited | Unlimited | €69.99 | SIM registration in Germany is awkward, so best bought in an O₂ shop. |
The Spanish company tiekom.com has also been recommended to us by several readers. They offer a 300GB per month SIM for €39.90, or a 400GB SIM for €59.90. All the data is available in 26 countries across Europe, including the UK. They’ll post the inactive SIM to your address in the UK (for €15, takes up to 10 days, they activate it when you ask) and seem to have great customer support. Well worth looking into if you plan a multi-country tour.
UPDATE March 2023: Users are reporting Tiekom are being forced with withdraw the outside-of-Spain roaming from April 2023 with the 300GB SIM due to issues with Vodafone, the underlying provider. Please check with them before ordering this SIM unless you only plan to use it in Spain.
The eSIM Option
We’re used to using physical SIM cards in our phones and routers. When we want to switch supplier, we have to physically remove the old SIM card from our phone and slot the new one in (although some phones support multiple SIMs). Some newer phones, watches, tablets, laptops & routers have a built-in SIM card though, which can’t be removed (there’s a list here). These support multiple suppliers, and let you change the supplier you’re using at any one point in time using your phone’s settings. This built-in SIM is called an eSIM (more info here). So you don’t need to go to a shop or have the physical card posted to you.
One such option (thanks to Frank for the info) is maya.net. You can buy an unlimited data 4G eSIM from them, which allows tethering and works in 28 European countries, for US$55 (about £47) a month. This is the only unlimited multi-country roaming option we know of, but won’t work in older phones or our Huawei router, so no good for us.
How Much Data Will You Need?
This is a ‘how long is a piece of string’ question, but let’s have a look-see anyway. It really depends on how you’re using the internet:
- How many of you will be sharing the SIM’s connection?
- Will you want to watch streaming video (YouTube, internet TV etc)?
- Do you stream music (Spotify, YouTube etc)?
- Do any of your party want to play internet games?
- Do you need to transfer large files, for work or vlogging perhaps?
- Do you have smartphone apps which transfer large volumes of data (newspaper apps for example)?
- Do you need video calling like WhatsApp or Zoom?
Of course you can simply switch off data roaming on all your devices, and rely on finding WiFi at tourist information, McDonalds, cafes and so on. We’ve made a game attempt to do this in the past but for us, convenient internet access inside our van has become pretty-much mandatory. We use it to find places to stay, check the weather, update our blog, make video calls home, read up on the history of where we are, look for lowest-cost fuel, find supermarkets and launderettes, tons of stuff.
We’ve found the amount of data we’ve used while roaming Europe in our motorhome has gradually drifted upwards over the years. A decade ago we started out with 25MB a day. That barely allowed us to upload text-only blog posts. These days we can easily plough through over 100GB a month, especially if we use our Fire TV to watch the telly abroad from the van. Even without TV or YouTube, two of us with smart phones and their plethora of data hungry apps easily eat over 1GB a day between us. The Statista website reflects this growing demand in smartphone data use – see the graphic below (these are averages, and presumably lots of people are also using tens of GB via home & work broadband connections on top of this).
One way to get an idea how much data you’ll use is to use your phone’s data monitoring application (or install an app to do it). This will only give you a rough idea though, especially if you use laptops, Kindles, internet TV and so on which consume additional data. While it’s difficult to say how much data anyone will need, our guess is you’ll most likely get through far more than you might imagine! We definitely have! If, like us, you’re used to ‘all you can eat’ broadband WiFi or 4G in the UK it can come as quite a shock being limited to 25GB a month abroad if you’re away for more than a few days.
How We Access the Internet from Our Motorhome
We’ve two smartphones with us, which both have 1pmobile.com prepaid SIM cards in them. We’ve found these don’t tend to get cut off if we’re away for several months, so we don’t lose our phone numbers. We don’t use mobile data on our phones though, as 1pmobile charge 1p per MB, which works out at over £10 per GB. If we used all the data, the 210GB we have on our French plan would cost over £2,000 a month on 1pmobile.
Instead we carry a Huawei Personal Wireless Hotspot (pictured above, like these on Amazon), also known as a router or MiFi. We put a SIM card in this, it connects to the mobile phone network and creates a private WiFi network in the van, sharing out the connection to up to 10 devices. After we’ve logged into the router’s internal web interface and set the amount of data our plan gives us, and when it expires, it shows on the front how much we’ve used (3.33GB from 120GB so far). Our router is also connected to a roof antenna, to boost the 3G and 4G signal in out-of-the-way places (more about our internet system here). So, we’re using our Free Mobile SIM in the Huawei device, not in our phones.
How We Bought a French SIM Card
This is how we went about buying a French SIM card:
- We did our research on the Prepaid Data SIM Wiki to find the best deal for our circumstances (see below for some hints and tips).
- We found a Free Mobile shop on our route (there’s a shop locator here).
- As well as shops, Free have locations with just the self-service machines, called bornes. Wo opted for a shop so the assistant could activate the SIM for us and help solve any issues.
- Our shop happened to be located in a shopping centre (so no problem parking and we could do a food shop afterwards). We drove there, parked up and found the shop.
- We took with us a screenshot of the SIM deal we wanted, plus our passports and MiFi router.
- We’re able to speak some French, so explained to the assistant what we wanted. This is the most difficult part, but we’ve managed it in other countries where we didn’t speak any of the language – google translate is a big help for things like this.
- The assistant walked across the shop to a set of bornes (the self-service machines) and popped our details into one of them.
- While we’d read a passport was needed, he didn’t ask for it, or for a driving license or any other ID.
- He selected which SIM option we wanted – we chose the SIM that stops working after a month and isn’t on a rolling month contract (otherwise you have to write to them to cancel it).
- He also entered any old French address, he didn’t ask for our address. If you are planning to do this yourself, research a local area postcode you need to type that in, before the machine gives options for streets and house numbers for you to pick from.
- We touched our debit card to pay and out popped the SIM.
- He activated the SIM for us and gave us a receipt with details we could use to log into our online Free Mobile account.
- We popped the SIM into the MiFi and, after setting the correct APN and rebooting it, it started to work.
We now have 210GB to use over the next 30 days. If we wander over the border into another EU country we can use 25GB of that data while we’re there too (or when we return to the UK). If we wanted to, we can buy another month or two’s data online, otherwise the SIM simply stops working after a calendar month.
An important point: we’ve found we can still use UK-only websites and apps like iPlayer when we are using a UK SIM. With the French SIM we’ve noticed we’re redirected from bbc.co.uk to bbc.com (which has ads) and iPlayer no longer works. To access these ‘geo-locked’ services we could use a VPN, but we’re happy to forego them while abroad.
Hints and Tips for Choosing a Local SIM Card
We’ve had some ‘fun’ over the years buying local SIM cards. Like trying to activate a Polish one, with all the messages arriving in Polish and no internet to translate them. Or the time our SIM card stopped working in Sicily after 2 days, necessitating trips to two shops, where we were treated to a lot of hand waving and shrugging. Or the many hours of sitting on the floor in an Orange shop in France waiting for someone to help us get a new SIM card to work.
We’ve learned a few bits and bobs with local SIMs the hard way, that’s for sure. As well as the obvious stuff, like how much data you get or how much it costs, here are a few tips for making sure you have a smooth experience with your foreign SIM:
- If you can, buy the SIM in the telecom company’s shop and get them to activate it. Don’t leave until you can open the BBC website!
- If you can’t get the SIM in a shop, make sure you understand how to activate it. You may need to send coded text messages or make a call from the SIM. In some countries (like Germany) may even need to do a video call to get the SIM activated.
- If you want to use the SIM in a phone for voice calls and SMS texts, make sure the SIM supports this.
- If you don’t speak the lingo, Google Translate some key phrases, write them down and show them to the staff.
- Make a note of the tariff you want, and make it clear to the staff you’re on holiday and only want a tariff without a contract which doesn’t auto-renew.
- Take your passport or driving license when you go. Some countries require this legally, some don’t, some don’t seem to know.
- Look up how to change the APN on your phone/MiFi and check which one your SIM needs before leaving the shop.
- Make sure tethering is allowed if you plan to share the connection in a MiFi/router or using your phone’s ‘hotspot’ feature.
- Check you’re getting the correct-sized SIM for your phone/MiFi (or one which can be snapped down to the right size).
- Some SIM cards will only work in a phone, check if you want to use it in a MiFi or other router.
- Some pre-paid cards run for to the end of the current month, most run for a calendar month.
- Make sure you’re not signing up to a recurring payment. In rare cases you have to physically write to the company when you want to stop using the SIM.
- If you’re away for more than a month, check how you can top-up the data. Ideally you’ll be able to do this online but some companies don’t accept UK credit cards.
Again, the Prepaid Data SIM Wiki is the best source of up-to-date impartial information we know of for research.
What’s Your Experience?
Have you bought a SIM card in the EU for internet access? What was your experience? Any issues? Any hints and tips to share? Please pop ’em in the comments below folks.
Cheers, Jay
We got tiekcom sim (Spanish) SIM card sent to us in uk (5euro cost) €39.90 pm for 300gb per month and can be used all across Europe inc turkey. We’ve had it for 4 months and travelled across Europe for 3 of these… use in the mifi… get an invoice each month to pay would recommend
Cracking deal that, thanks Glen 👌😀 Jay
For anyone reading this, blog reader Roger Jones previously recommended this company:
“Anyway, my searching and searching has finally turned up what I think is perfect. I’ve been using it for two days now in Spain and all seems to be working as advertised.
In basic terms, it’s non throttled (save for signal challenges) so up to 150mb download, 300Gb per month, rolling one month commitment, it’s on Vodafone ES and less than €40 per month. Yes that’s correct, zero commitment, no topping up, 300 Gigabyte for <€40 per month!!!! I’m using the data SIM in my Netgear router, it was a very simple set-up and registration process and they very kindly supplied me with two sims so I can use another on my next visit to Spain. They couriered to my campsite in Spain and the customer service I received and the instant replies to messages was simply fantastic. The company is Tiekom based in Madrid. They have completed everything with me via email, from initial contact, through ordering to setup etc. https://tiekom.com/internet-at-home/data-sim/
The person I have been dealing with is Camino and she’s been absolutely fantastic, super responsive, fantastic English and made everything incredibly easy! You can email her at: sales@tiekom.com
I have no association whatsoever with this company or this person, but I’ve been genuinely impressed with the service. Please do mention me to Camino if you reach out to her, as she and Teikom have just the product and service we need in Spain and I promised that if Teikom did what they advertised, that I would recommend her to others, so the association of me to your enquiries would allow me to fulfil on that promise.”
Saw someone else say this Tiekom is capped at a small amount outside Spain (either 12 or 24gb can’t remember). Do you know?
As far as I know (going from the email below forwarded to me) Tiekom allow all 300GB to be used across all EU Zone 1 countries. To be 100% sure I’d contact sales@tiekom.com and get a reply before ordering the SIM William. Cheers, Jason
“From: sales
Date: 25 August 2022 at 08:40:24 BST
To:
Subject: RV: Tiekom – Data travel
Dear
Thanks for contacting Tiekom 😊
Please find here more information about our New Data sim 300GB: (we don’t do any 500Gb sim card, sorry)
• Speeds up to 150MB
• 300GB month
• Roaming in EU (zone 1)
• 4G and 5G coverage
• FREE activation fee and no commitment to remain
• Monthly fee 39,90€
This sim card can be used in these countries:
Germany, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, French Caribbean, Cyprus, Croatia, Denmark, Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia, USA, Finland, France, Gibraltar, Greece, Holland, Hungary, Ireland, Iceland, Italy, La Reunion, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Monaco, Norway, Poland, Portugal, United Kingdom of Great Britain, Czech Republic, Romania, San Marino, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey.
Azores, Guadeloupe and Saint Martin (French Caribbean), Guam, Guernsey, French Guiana (French Caribbean), Isle of Man, Mayotte Island, Aland Islands, Jersey, Kosovo, Madeira, Martinique (French Caribbean), US Virgin Islands, Vatican.
We can post the sim card to your address:
International Shipments…shipping cost 15€
National Shipments… shipping cost 8,50€
and you can set it up whenever you need and wherever you are. Sim cards are always shipped deactivated, so please contact me as soon as you get your sim card to set it up.
You will get 300GB of data, no matter where you are.
Be aware that delivery process overseas can take 10 days.
We are very flexible and payment can be made by direct debit on your bank account, credit card and bank transfer.
It’s billed monthly for a calendar month and the first month is done pro rata.
Attached I have sent you the customer details form you can complete and send me back. I will need please a pic of your passport document.
Once I have registered you as a client in our system, you will receive a welcome mail from Tiekom with a username and password which will enable you to get into the customer area. You will be able to make the payment by credit card and download your invoices using this tool.
I am at your disposal for any further information you may require.
Best regards,
Camino
“
Hiya. We’d been thinking about Tiekom too. Could I ask, can you get iPlayer for example using it or do you use a vpn too? Chatting with a British guy in Spain he said he could get everything he’s normally get with a UK sim. Thanks
We also have Tiekon and also deal with Camino, you feel like she is your personal assistant, she posted the sim to me in the UK and answered any questions. 😀
We’re currently in France and purchased a Lebara sim card for 25 euros (including 10 euros activation fee). It includes 50Gb and was bought from a mobile phone shop in a small town so they’re readily available. There’s a useful app showing daily data use and it’s set to not automatically renew after the month. Only downside is that it won’t work in our Netgear router.
Thanks for the info David, happy travels, Jay
Game changer here!!!
I have just noticed a new UK mvno that piggybacks the EE network called popitmobile. They offer a no contract SIM at 100gb for £25 but best of all there are no charges, caps or limits whilst roaming and they operate a “soft” 90 day usage limit abroad. I got a message from them saying as long as EE don’t force them(and they don’t expect them to) then they are happy to allow roaming for longer than 90 days.
http://www.popitmobile.co.uk
Fiver cheaper than the Tesco rocket SIM and no strict 60day roaming usage so looks a winner to me.
Also I have a suggestion for a Spanish local SIM. I have used simyo and they charge €17 for 100gb with ₹10 upfront cost but this gets credited to your account. Most Carrefour supermarkets have a booth selling simyo.
Cheers John – spotted popit last night, through Facebook – I’ve added them to the post. Happy travels fella, Jay 👍
We just bought a prepaid data SIM in Montenegro, 500 GB for 15 euros per month including the card. Once you have the card, it’s 3 euros per month to top it up!
Right, Montenegro here we come! 😀 Cheers, happy travels guys, Jay
My experience of Free Mobile from a few years ago, was of poor coverage. I would love to find out your experience of this as you travel around. Hopefully they have improved as this looks like a good deal.
Hi Peter. We’re typically seeing 20Mbps download speeds on the locations we’ve stayed at across Brittany so far. Cheers, Jay
Hiya. Just curious as you mentioned VPN. Do you have any insight as to how they work with mifi’s and which ones. For example NordVPN say they don’t work with the Huawei ones. Seems the easiest way is to vpn a uk sim in a mifi?!! Thanks
Hi Lisa – we’ve never used a VPN with our router setup, so we can’t really help much. When we’ve used UK SIMs in the past they’ve allowed us to access iPlayer etc without a VPN. Foreign SIMs don’t – iPlayer is blocked. The next time we head abroad we’ll probably try popit mobile (www.popitmobile.co.uk/roaming). They offer 100GB uncapped a month, but I don’t know whether iPlayer etc definetly works abroad with this SIM without using a VPN.
If you want to be sure/use a SIM sourced from outside the UK, I’d check with the VPN service provider which routers they support. If yours isn’t listed, get one which is or look for another VPN provider who supports your router. Alternatively, install their VPN client on your end devices instead – your phones, laptops, smart TV stick etc – again assuming they all support the client – although that’s obviously more of a pain as you’d need to start the VPN service on each device every time you want to use it.
Sorry I can’t help more, best of luck, Jay
Does anyone know if when using the tiekcom sim in France if you can get BBC Iplayer, I usually use a VPN and have no problem viewing it Luckily the campsites we stay on have good local Wi-Fii, but I have been using a 3 mobile sim but with the cap at 12.5 GB I’m thinking of getting the tiekcom sim
Thank you
Hi Neil – as far as I know that 300GB Tiekcom offer is no longer available. I’ve no idea whether their SIMs issue UK IP addresses but I doubt it, you’d need the VPN I think.
Cheers, Jay
Hi There .we are heading to France for 3n half weeks and looking for the exact same data sim as yourself . One with over 300 gb and self terminates a month later without us having to do anything. Is it possible you can email me the sim deal you wanted or better still a pic of it so we can show the assistant
Hi Stephen – this is the latest version of the SIM we got – it’s ‘sans engagement’ so is prepaid monthly and has 210GB for €19.99 a month:
https://mobile.free.fr/fiche-forfait-free
Cheers, have a great time, Jay
Thanks Jay
Sorry to be a pest but does this sim cancel after one month or do we have to cancel it . Also
do we just go into shop with your link to get directly or fill out the online order form
Thanks Jay so we just take this open link into shop and buy sim. Just to confirm that we only make one payment this will self cancel after a month
Hi Stephen – I’m pretty certain the payment was only for a single month then it expired automatically, as I recall there’s an app or website you needed to top up on if you wanted longer. The shop we went into had machines where you could order the SIM yourself but we asked for help from an assistant, telling them we were only in France for a month, who ran through the process for us. If you’ve any specific questions you could use Google Translate to get them into French before you arrive then just show the assistant on your phone, ideally questions with either Yes or No for an answer. As long as the shop isn’t rammed busy we’ve always found assistants to be very helpful. Cheers, Jay
We always use our own off two phones initially which is Lebara on our arrival in Spain. But once we travel down to Benidorm we always go and see Andy in Benidorm market and he sorts us out a 28 day data only sim, last year it was a deal for double data so 200 gb for €20 and worked great, this year it was still €20 but only the std 100gb but works well in our motorhome mifi. Before crossing the border we went into a simyo shop in Lepe and got a €100gb which then covered us in Spain and into Portugal and I think it would also have covered France but the 28 days ran out before we got there. So now our 28 days has just expired this year so we will now do the same again and find a simyo shop to see us through.