SIM card Greece

[brownsox]

I have done a search for this but got everything about Greece, nothing much about SIM cards.
Planning our summer in Greece. We'll want a micro sim to put in the ipad for data only. One that if we use up the allowance we can easily top up ...
Anybody got any useful experience on this, please?
Need to be able to buy it asap so presumably Corfu.
Thanks!

 

[charles_reed]

I'm using a Vodafone contract 5Gb/month €30.
There are cheaper, have a look @ OTE.
They'll probably have to cut down the standard SIM to micro - make sure they do it so any misscuts are their cost.

 

[brownsox]

Thanks Charles. Can you top it up if necessary? No mention of that on the site and I am incapable of imagining 5gb I'm afraid.

 

[vyv_cox]

I have the same as Charles. Vodafone coverage seems good in Ionian and Aegean, we are rarely without a signal even in remote anchorages. I typically use about 2 Gb per month on forums and some surfing but never download any big files. Topup is easy, any kiosk will sell you 30 days internet code number, whereas we often find the Vodafone shops, who sell scratch cards with the number, do not have the 30 day one we want.

 

[RichardS]

I bought a payg Wind data sim when I was in Corfu last year but the signal was weak or non-existent in some places.

I will go for Vodafone or Cosmote next time.

Richard

 

[telford_mike]

You can get them on eBay if you want to avoid faffing around at phone shops, e.g.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Greek-Vod...163?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item19fddaf723

 

[RobbieW]

Round the Ionian last year we found Cosmote was great, tried Wind as well but coverage was poor. One useful attribute of the Cosmote deal was (iirc) that if you ran out of Gb early you could just top it up without waiting for the end of the period. To put this in context, 30 mins of radio is around 25Mb, 30 mins of SD TV is around 300Mb and HD TV around 500Mb - an email of around 150 words is about 3.5Kb. The amount of data used varies hugely dependent on a number of things; how many programs or apps you allow to auto update, whether you allow Facebook (or anything else) to auto run videos, whether you use AdBlock in a browser (I found a couple of years ago that ads added 30% to the traffic received from YBW) to give just a few - between two of us 5-10Gb/month is ample.

 

[duncan99210]

Whoever you go to (Vodafone, Cosmote, Wind or OTE) they will all sell you a micro SIM if you tell them what you want it for. Indeed, if you take your IPad in with you, they'll fit the SIM for you and make sure it has the right APN phrase entered (I think iPads do that for themselves with the later updates to iOS but no harm in letting the chap do it for you). Plenty of places to buy top up vouchers for when you go over the limit. Your iPad should simply take you to the top up site when your data runs out: there's a button to select English on the site to make things easier.
A point to note is that whilst the shops will often accept UK credit and debit cards, when I last tried you still couldn't use a UK card to top up,over the Internet.

 

[Networks]

We got a Vodafone data SIM from the Vodafone shop in the square by the main bus "station" in Corfu, no problems and you can top it up from any tobacco stand. Only thing to watch is that it is set for no roaming, as we sailed North around Corfu it found that the Albanian signal was stronger so switched to that, it cost us most of our credit in roaming charges.

 

[charles_reed]

Thanks Charles. Can you top it up if necessary? No mention of that on the site and I am incapable of imagining 5gb I'm afraid.

I used to think 5Gb a lot - on the boat I use about 3.2Gb - at home <10Gb

Until Son 2 returned to the nest and started on streaming Netflix - it's now 150-200Gb/month.

On the contract, you'll need to show you're local (marina contract does that) and give them a credit card to charge.
On PAYG prices are a lot higher and you'll have to go round the offices (Wind, Vodafone and OTE/Germanos are only a block apart in Kerkyra) as offers come and go like flatulence.

 

[AndrewB]

I bought a payg Wind data sim when I was in Corfu last year but the signal was weak or non-existent in some places.

I will go for Vodafone or Cosmote next time.

Richard

+1

 

[TonyMS]

Just bought a Cosmote SIM in Preveza. The guy in Germanos spoke fluent English and was very helpful. With luck it'll work better than the (cheaper) Wind SIM we had last year. He claims you can top up online.

 

[tedgorton]

I have used the same (free) Cosmote SIM for 4 years, top it up on landing (website and SIM only work in Greece), EUR 30 for a month and 5 GB; if you run out you can top up online using a credit card, that was new last year and very convenient. Coverage is excellent in most places.