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Comment by fullspectrumdev | Hacker News Reader

Depends where you are. In some European countries (Germany) mobile data is expensive. And mobile coverage even in cities can be kind of shit.

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Just had a look at Ubigi, which I used when on vacation in Japan, and they sell a data only recurring monthly Germany 20 GB data subscription for 19 USD. It's 8 USD more if you want all of Europe. So a bit more pricey. I haven't looked at other vendors, but I don't think there is anything special with my choice of data esim vendor, nor their prices. I haven't seen anything, on their pages, that indicates, that there are stay limits, and if there where, you would expect them to flag that? I wouldn't view these prices as expensive, and they seem not that far from what I pay I Norway. But what is cheap for some, is expensive for others, so what do I know?

This also won't help with coverage, of course, and if you want a phone number, you would need an extra SIM for that.

Some unfortunately only refer to DE. Every country adapted their data packages but in Germany, the prices are still vintage :/

Could you not simply get an eSIM from another country with better costs and use free roaming?

Last time I looked into this, there were no (cheap) providers that allow you to permanently reside in another country

Depends on the definition of cheap. I.e. firstly is available in most countries afaik, no matter where your residence is.

https://www.firsty.app/

It's not very cheap if you want to use it for months, but plenty of other options around too

Firstly is extremely expensive. To give you an idea, my 200Gb/month 5G uncapped speed plan costs me 14 euros a month here in France.

Amusingly this plan includes 40Gb/month in Germany at no additional costs which is much cheaper than a German plan.

I have some friends in Germany who have been using much cheaper Spanish pay-as-you-go SIMs for the last couple of years. Admittedly not as their daily drivers though - they use them intermittently for hotspots when they don't have access to decent wired/wifi

Most have caps.

My “solution” for a while was a stack of prepaid throwaway SIM cards with unlimited data from a nearby country and a cheap USB powered 4G hotspot in my bag powered by a power bank. They would last about a month.

They will charge you for roaming if you're clearly abusing the system (ie, not living in the place you bought the SIM). How long that takes to happen depends on the individual provider - if they didn't then everyone would predictably just use cheaper eastern Europe SIMs.

Agree but despite the roaming at times it can be way cheaper. For instance paying for BElgium operator (not necessarily the cheapest) you can buy an unlimited 5G (limited to 90G in BE without throttle) which in roaming is 31G costing 25 Eur.

I’ve also seen some cheaper providers than this in DE but they limit 5G to 50mbps :(

Even free roaming has data caps IIRC

Yep. I’ve gamed it a lot, but it’s a pain in the arse.

You can do the trick of buying up a stack of prepaid SIM cards when travelling and using a cheap dongle, but it’s a lot of effort and eventually stops working - probably due to the IMEI being banned though I’ve not confirmed that.

It’s less effort to just snag a new local SIM upon landing at most airports and using it as a hotspot.

Or, you know. Rolling out WiFi as a public service. Which would be kinda cool.

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