I’m always surprised when I find an operator that doesn’t do PAYG data. The very nice yet very firm lady in the Orange store — to whom I was trying to give my business — explained that this was absolutely impossible.
Those Americans I’d bumped into with their bags? Turns out they’d obviously bought PAYG handsets. That “don’t do” (the ladys words) data.
Triple arse. The only reason I’m looking for a solution in the first place is because I will use more than 25mb a day in data while in Barcelona. Right now I’m charged a very equitable £2/day for 25mb of roaming data by Vodafone UK. After 25mb, I get screwed to the tune of £1 per megabyte. So uploading 50 photos each at 1 meg gets a bit annoying.
At some point one of the operators will wake up to the total arse that is data roaming — along with the crazy situation that I, as a France Telecom (Orange UK) customer am charged stupid rates for roaming by.. France Telecom’s Orange ES business. Given the cash ends up in the same bank account, one would imagine at some point one of these large operator groups will do some kind of fair international roaming deal. Vodafone is almost there with it’s £2/day deal. If only they blocked that — so I am charged £2 every 25mb — I’d be perfectly delighted. 100mb would cost me £8. 200mb, £16. That’s entirely reasonable for roaming.
Anyway thanks for almost helping Orange and France Telecom.
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amazed you didn’t find all this out before you left! Glad Rafe set you right:-)
Hey Ewan – why not use Yoigo? I used them when I was in Barcelona – it was like less than 2 Euros a day for unlimited data.
Don’t agree the price is reasonable *at all*. Complete rip off. Swisscom gives 1Gb a *day* for 4 CHF a day. Vodafone, who own a big chunk of Swisscom charge £2 for 25Mb. 4 CHF is just over £2 – go figure
Nah I wanted to do it real time!
That’s precisely what I’ve done!
There’s being macho and being broke – I know which I’d rather be! Enjoy Barca
Swisscom give 1GB *roaming* data for 4CHF per day or is that a local tariff?
Vodafone Spain offers an excellent 0,50 euros/day PAYG option.
I used Carrefour’s payg data deal. A euro plus VAT for 100MB and five euros for the SIM.
Excellent.
Nice!