Prepaid Cell Phones for International Travel (Ibiza)

soulcompromise

Active Member
My phone won't go to Europe. I was wondering if anyone knows a good approach to having a cellular phone while traveling.

What I was thinking: Buy prepaid at the airport (When I went to London in 2017 this is what someone said to do). But I've been searching around and I found a site that's pushing prepaid SIM cards, such that you just pop the SIM into your phone. I don't trust it and I'm not sure what to do...

Other concerns: I'm worried about setting up my burn phone (prepaid phone) in English. Although I'm taking a Spanish course (I'm traveling to Ibiza, Spain next Spring, which is what all this is for) or two, I really don't trust that I'll have anything down in time to be able to go through and set up a phone (with time zones, and voice mail passwords, or google accounts etc).

Any advice would be highly appreciated!!
 
Last couple of trips I took an unlocked beater phone (ebay/ amazon $15) that takes a large sim card.

Buy a sim card at the airport or your first day on island. In my experience, "Orange" network works best. I got months worth of data for about 30 euros. This is enough to keep you in WhatsAp to get in touch with people in Ibiza and home and a few minutes for local calls.
 
Last couple of trips I took an unlocked beater phone (ebay/ amazon $15) that takes a large sim card.

Buy a sim card at the airport or your first day on island. In my experience, "Orange" network works best. I got months worth of data for about 30 euros. This is enough to keep you in WhatsAp to get in touch with people in Ibiza and home and a few minutes for local calls.
Thanks. Does "Orange" make calls to both Spain and United States, or just Spain? For me, home is in California.
 
Its a legitimate carrier, like Verizon or Sprint. :lol:

I am sure they do let you make calls to the US, but it will probably eat your prepaid voice credit much faster. We really only used for data, not voice. There are a variety of prepaid plan options, so just ask the person at the store for the best one.
 
I found this. Amazon It looks like a good option.

One thing I wanted to ask about (and I realize you may not know the answer) is the voice activated feature that Google uses and its prevalence on Ibiza... what I mean to say is, will I be able to ask the google on my android phone questions, or is it a service that's not available on Ibiza?

I'm always googling something; lately it's how to say something in Spanish. But sometimes it's nice to have the bot tell me the temperature or what time it is in LA or whatever else. Anyway, I'm always using data to google something so I'm just wondering if someone has experience using the data on their phone on Ibiza.

Thanks.
 
I found Google Fi! Google Fi is Google's answer to cell phone service. It's $20 for unlimited talk and text for 1 person; $35 for two. It has data for $10/GB; data is free after 6 GB. The rate for international calling is $.20 per minute. I'm pretty excited about it. The tech support is probably a little better than some of the prepaid cards people are using. There's no contract, so you just stop using it when you get home. Or stay with Google, whatever.

I have a good plan, but it only works locally, so this looks good as a secondary. To me, it's just like buying a prepaid SIM card with more of the details explained. Here is a link.

Google Fi Plan
 
I'm thinking about starting up Fi sometime just so that I'll be comfortable with it. The issue I think that most concerns me is my # - I'd want to port my number for sure!

I'm going to ask you guys this: Do any of the short-term international airport SIM card carrier/providers temporarily port your number to their SIM?
 
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