Pre Paid SIM Card for International Tourist

Advice, information and discussions on travelling in Southern Africa
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Mel
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Pre Paid SIM Card for International Tourist

Post by Mel »

4 years ago we bought a SIM card from B4IGO, aka Vodacom which was quite convenient because I was able to order it online and just collect it when we arrived at Cape Town airport. Back then we only went for airtime and found the price alright (although I wouldn't be able to say from the top of my head how much exactly we paid).

This time we were looking into airtime and a data bundle (1 GB seems to be desirable). Vodacom (B4IGO) seems to be the onlycCompany who offers packages that are valid for longer than 30 days. But the exact packages on offer can't be customized and with wanting 1 GB of data I'd be stuck with ZAR 275.00 worth of airtime as well. I don't think I'll need the latter any time soon - even with other trips coming up - and the Price of ZAR 649.00 seems quite steep.

So the question is: Does anyone have any other experiences that I couldn't find out about on the internet?


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RobertT
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Re: Pre Paid SIM Card for International Tourist

Post by RobertT »

ask them if you are able to top up on the packages. Then go for cheapest and buy data separately at atm or most spar's, pick n pay etc.


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Re: Pre Paid SIM Card for International Tourist

Post by PRWIN »

Mel

get Vodacom pay as you go (no contract) and buy data as needed as Robert says at most places

1GB data for R149 for 30 days or you can buy 500mb data for 30 days at R99 and if used top up with another 500mb of data which valid for another 30 days from date bought \O


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Mel
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Re: Pre Paid SIM Card for International Tourist

Post by Mel »

You make it sound easy, RobT and PR \O Thanks for the advice X#X


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Re: Pre Paid SIM Card for International Tourist

Post by PRWIN »

Mel

Not sure how you will go about activating the pay as you go sim card for international tourists as we have a thing called rica where you have to give info on who, where you are to activate it -O- -O-


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Re: Pre Paid SIM Card for International Tourist

Post by RobertT »

The company they purchase it from at airport sort that, believe they use passport and plane ticket.

When are you here Mel and for how long are you needing it?


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Re: Pre Paid SIM Card for International Tourist

Post by Lisbeth »

That's what I did last time we were in SA \O


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Mel
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Re: Pre Paid SIM Card for International Tourist

Post by Mel »

PRWIN wrote:Mel

Not sure how you will go about activating the pay as you go sim card for international tourists as we have a thing called rica where you have to give info on who, where you are to activate it -O- -O-
RobT gave most of the answer to that... On top of the passport and the flight ticket you'll also need the confirmation of a hotel (or similar) you're staying at.

Robert, we'll arrive on the 18th and are staying for two weeks. But since we return every six months, we might want to use it again in October.
That's what we did we the previous sim card. But at some point we must have overstepped a time limit and that was that...


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Re: Pre Paid SIM Card for International Tourist

Post by arks »

Mel, what I use is Vodacom pay as you go, this is for my phone, and then I buy an unlimited data bundle good for 30 days for R59 (I have a Blackberry and the charges for other types of data packages may be different), which is deducted from the airtime on the phone. Your phone should stay 'active' for six months, but a safer system is to arrange to send a monthly SMS to a friend in SA. You then put the phone onto 'roamon' when you leave the country, which allows you to send SMSes from overseas but no calls or data. And when you return, you put the phone to 'roamoff' and it works in SA as normal. This works great for me as I need to have an RSA phone number and NOT have it change each time I return to the country.

Now if you're talking about data for your dongle, that's a different matter. You can buy various amounts of data, 250MG, 500MG, 1G etc, which last for a month. I don't think that these are easily topped up with vouchers (I've certainly never tried), you need to go to a Vodacom outlet for additional data for the dongle.

So it depends a bit what you need, data on your phone or separately for a dongle. HTH.


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Re: Pre Paid SIM Card for International Tourist

Post by RobertT »

The atm's in SA have a prepaid airtime/data bundle selection as well as drawing money. You just need to know the service provider and number of sim and follow prompts if you can only get a voucher, then put sim in phone and punch in digits on voucher for loading, think Vodacom is *111#voucher number#


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