Pre-paid mobile broadband

Overview Pre-paid mobile broadband

This shall serve as an overview for cheap 3g mobile broadband providers, sorted by country. (For all of us, who like their internet always-on, no matter where they are.)

Please feel free to add geek-approved providers you can recommend, if your country is not listed, yet, feel free to add it, too.

Disclaimer

This is a private collection of links and explanations with absolute no commercial interest. The information is provided as-is and not necessarily up to date or correct. The information on this page does not give any product recommendation and is no substitute for you reading the complete contract a provider offers you. You are solely responsible for any contract you sign and any product you buy, so read the details. Especially are neither Das Labor e.V. nor any contributor to this list to be held responsible for your actions. This page shall merely give you some hints where to look when you need some cheep and fair mobile broadband access abroad.

Providers/Tariffs by Country

Please mark your entries with [PHONE], if the respective tariff allows for the use on a phone, only, not tethering allowed. Mark your entry with [DATA-ONLY], if the tariff you recommend is a data-only plan, where calls/short message are either blocked or insanely expensive. Mark your entry with [BOTH], if the respective tariff allows for phone calls/short messages and mobile broadband internet no matter what device you use for accessing the internet.

France

• please add some! the cheapest way to have mobile internet in france I found so far was using a german simyo pre-paid card. All the french mobile broadband pre-paid plans I found were even more expensive

It seems that there are little to none proper volume limited data plans in France, at least not in the prepaid segment. You normally find plans that have things like "2h or internet usage". Even day tickets are hard to find. It seems to be better with postpaid (forfait) contracts, but those are ~ 30 EUR a month with at least a 12 month duration. So, not really prepaid, eh ;) ?

• [PHONE] SFR

They offer an iPhone only data plan for 3 EUR / one day or 10 EUR / 7 days. It is called La Carte Recharge iPhone 3G and should work only for the iPhone as (at least that's what I've understood from the French postings in the web + the little French I speak) with clients who send an iPhone User Agent and only for Web and mail. It seems that my Android phone does not even get a connection to their APN; this however could also be a misconfiguration / lack of GPRS provisioning on my freshly bought prepaid card Beware: The SFR shop I went to today had never heard of this option before and the sales girl couldn't speak English; so better bring a translator when shopping here

• [DATA-ONLY] [PHONE] Orange

They have a plan for 100 (or 75) MB per 24h that costs 12 EUR. It's called M6 mobile La clé3G+: http://www.m6mobile.fr/offres-m6-mobile/cle-3g.html

• o2 Germany roaming

If you are a o2 customer, remember that o2 charges only 15 EUR per day of data usage if you don't generate more than 50 MB of traffic.

Please also remember: this cap only applies to a) the EU countries and b) is counted per calendar-day per country. Example: You travel via Amsterdam to Toulouse, start on the 25th in the evening and go back on the 26th in the afternoon you can easily end up paying 60 EUR (2 countries, 2 calendar days).

Germany

• [BOTH] [Tchibo mobil] pre-paid SIM card for 9.95 Euro. Buy it in a Tchibo shop (usually at least one per city) or order online [shop]
  • Phone calls to regular German numbers: 15ct/min
  • 25ct/MB or:
  • Day-Flat: 2.95 Euro/day (Fair-use 1GB/day. After 1GB speed is throttled to 64kb/s)
  • Data Pack 500MB: 500MB 9.95 Euro/month (After 500MB speed is throttled to 64kb/s)
  • Data Flat: 19.95 Euro/month (Fair-use 5GB/month. After 5GB speed is throttled to 64kb/s)
  • Connection speed: up to 3.6Mbit/s (HSDPA) (Carrier: o2)
  • Top-up: via voucher+text (bought in store) or online via invoice/CC
  • Registration: Online or via Telephone

• [BOTH] [Simyo] pre-paid SIM card for varying prices (between 3.99 and 9.99 Euro). Order online.
  • Phone calls to regular German numbers: 9ct/min
  • Texts to regular German numbers: 9ct/min
  • 24ct/MB or
  • 1GB data pack 9.90Euro/30days (renewing, can be cancelled anytime during these 30d to stop it from renewing)
  • Connection speed: up to 386kbit/s (UMTS) (Carrier: eplus)

• [Aldi Talk] pre-paid SIM: 12.99
  • Per-day Flat: 1.99 EUR
  • 30 Days: 14.99 EUR
  • UMTS only (384 kbit/s), will be slowed down to GPRS speed if you use more than 5GB per month
  • Registration: Online or via Telephone
  • Carrier: eplus
  • Personal data verification works online and is cheatable

UK

• [PHONE] [T-Mobile Pay-as-you-go SIM only]
  • Phone calls 25p/min
  • Text msg 10p
  • Mobile internet on your phone "0.73p per KB each day (midnight to midnight) when you use internet on your phone until you hit £1 a day and then we won't charge you any more"
  • Fair-use policy: 40MB/day
  • no tethering, no IM, no p2p (+ other limitations, read the fine print)
  • Connection speed: up to 4.5Mbit/s (HSDPA)

• [BOTH] [3 Pay as you go]
  • Phone calls (domestic) 25p/min
  • Text msg 10p (+limited free allowance with every top-up)
  • Mobile internet: free allowance of 150MB with every top-up, then 30p / MB (without Broadband PayG packet) [source]
  • 'Broadband Addons' (amount of data/price): 1GB/10GBP; 3GB/15GBP; 7GB/25GBP
  • [Find a store] or [order online]
  • Stores in most bigger towns and cities (e.g. London Victoria Station, Oxford City shopping center etc.)
  • NO 2G coverage (3G-only provider)! Coverage is all-right in towns and cities, bad coverage in rural areas
  • Top-up works online with credit- or debit card
  • SIM is deactivated if not used for 6 month