Blackberries and Europe - my T-Mobile experience.

[radi0chik]

So I live in the US, and have my blackberry data service through AT$T. I knew I'd be in Europe over the holiday season, so I did research ahead of time to try and figure out what I needed to do. I have the Torch, and there was some discussion as to whether the service books worked properly over there yet. I ended up on twitter, DMing T-mobiles UK support account, who were surprisingly knowledgeable and helpful (in contrast to the AT&T folks I'm used to talking to).

They said if I bought a Pay As You Go (prepaid) sim card through them, they DID have blackberry service in the UK. The cost for one month of blackberry data is 15pounds. Then if you go to other European countries (the two I was going to were Denmark and Germany), you can spend another 15pounds and get a roaming booster to roam in other European countries.

Several drawbacks with this: First of all, there are no T-mobile stores at Heathrow Airport (that we could find anyway). This means you have to plan a layover (provided you go through Heathrow, and don't go straight to your European destination), take the tube into town (30 min ride?) find a T-mobile store, buy the sim, "top up" (add money to your PAYG acct) and send the booster text.
Second, when we got to the T-mobile store in the UK (It was the eastern most one on Oxford St in London), the salesman we spoke to gave us conflicting information saying there was NO roam booster for blackberries for Europe. So I didn't spend the 15 extra pounds, and just assumed I could get a PAYG data sim in the other countries. I was wrong.

The data sim worked great for the 5 days we were stranded at Heathrow (thank you snow!), but upon finally leaving and going to Germany, sure enough, it didn't work. Moreover, since I do not have a UK mailing address or credit card, I could not "top up" over the internet. Nor could I at a T-mobile store in Germany. (I was thinking if I topped up with 15 more pounds, I could try the bbroam booster and see if it worked. Never could top up.) Same name, different company.

So we went through a mall in Germany, where they had all the major players there. T-mobile, E+, Orange, O2, Vodafone. T-mobile was the only one who had PAYG data sims. NOBODY had ANY PAYG PLANS FOR BB IN GERMANY. Thankfully I brought a backup HTC phone. T-mobiles PAYG data in Germany was terribly expensive. 5 euros a day. You'd think for a company who started over there, they'd be able to get the price more reasonable. Apparently not.

Due to being stuck in London, we never made it to Denmark to test the waters there, but I do know it works in UK. That may be the ONLY European country that does PAYG for BB though.

Anyone have any additional input? I'll learn for next time I go over there.

All in all, I STILL think I got a MUCH better deal at 15pounds plus 5euros/day for 5 days totaling an estimated 60 USD as opposed to 119.95 that AT$T wants for 100 meg of international data. My European data was unlimited.

[Qbnkelt]

I had a similar experience, although I stayed put.
I bought a SIM card at the Vodaphone in Galway City. I used my Torch throughout Ireland, but I really didn't touch it when we hopped over to Spain, so I don't know what the experience would have been like. We were on a family holiday visiting relatives in Spain, didn't stay long. The Torch with the Vodaphone SIM card performed admirably well through the whole of Ireland.

[radi0chik]

Can you edit your post to approx how much it costed for the Vodaphone data sim? Nice to know that company has coverage there. Maybe we should all work on a map of which companies have BB Data PAYG in which countries

[Qbnkelt]

It was actually about 70 euros, I'll have to find that receipt. We had around 400 minutes (which we hardly used) and we had Blackberry data. I wasn't on it much, but I did use it to check out 9780 release dates on AT&T!!! none...I was sad to see....

[Paladinleeds]

O2-UK have brought out some PAYG plans for it. Internetional roaming however, I'm not 100% sure about that, but I THINK there is a bolt-on for that.

[HIGHLANDER]

I am on a monthly contract with Orange and i have been abroad several times with different bb"s i had at the time of the vacation.I went to The Dominican Republic in september and took my 9700 with me,prior to that i was in the canary island ie Tenerife.Orange offer a flexible system of bolt on for the traveller going abroad which vodafone does not as my wife who is with them tried to arrange something similar to me and found no options available to her.

Orange has a bolt on for predetermined sizes of data which is to be used in a certain time period,usually 1 month.When in the canaries i arranged a data bolt on of 50mb which cost me £30.This i knew would easily cover me for my 2 week vacation and allowed me to use my bb as i would at home.I loaded Data monitor a paid app that tracks your usage daily,weekly,monthly and allows you to set an alerts for when you get near your data limit.
If you read up on the orange website the costs vary depending on where you are travelling to in the world as the Dominican was more expensive than the canaries.
Orange offer pay as you go blackberry so i would imagine a bolt on would still be available to payg customers.Next time a go abroad i will look into other aspects of using your phone abroad ie receiving voice mail etc as they charge you for this service,so turn it off before you go so as not to be getting any unexpected charges on your return.

Cheers Highlander

ps the data allowed me to use the browser,sent receive e mails,twitter and facebook and most importantly bbm for my family,who i used it to talk to most days and sent pic"s back of what the kids where up to.Obviously if you can get some wifi coverage you won"t use the data but most hotels charge you for using the wifi (did in Dominican).Other uses of my bb where charged at the going rate so from memory 50p for a text and £2.75 per minute for a call from Dominican back to uk