Quote:
Originally Posted by SD ///M4
TravelPass is a pay-as-you-go plan, at $10/day. This is the only Verizon plan that allows you to use your domestic data limits. The monthly plan for $25 that I was looking at has the 100MB data cap. If I activate both my phone and my wife's phone on the Travel Pass plan, then it's $10/day x 2 x 20 days, or $400, assuming that we both use it each day.
But the thing that you're missing is the speed/data caps:
"4G LTE World Devices are capable of roaming at 4G LTE speeds where available. In other countries, data service is on our roaming partner's GSM network at 3G/2G speeds.
If you're using TravelPass in one of the 130+ countries...then high speed data applies for the first 512 MB/day with 2G reduced speeds thereafter." 2G is really, really slow (<0.1Mbit/s compared to 4G at 15Mbit/s typical speeds) so this is not at all like using your phone at home! This makes your phone virtually unusable for data!
Euro SIMS are generally cheaper than $10/day, allow 4G speed with no speed throttling, and still have all the advantages of using your own phone. If I bought two Orange SIMS for $50 each for 14 days and paid the additional ~$24 for another 14 days and 5GB more, the total cost is only about $150. Or I could just buy one for my phone and set it up as a personal hotspot (allowed on the Orange card) and tether my wife's phone and our tablets. 4G speed, and 15GB for 30 days.
We used an Ortel SIM in 2016 and it worked great, until we ran out of data and couldn't figure out how to do a top-up. Orange offers English support.
I'm still not seeing anything that offers the speed, data, and relative ease of use of the Orange SIM. |
I wasn't missing anything. Given that most hotels have wi-fi, I would think that 0.5GB would be sufficient for time not in the hotel, unless you are doing a lot of streaming (I plan on spending my time in Europe enjoying Europe, not looking at my phone).
We will turn off my wife's phone during the day and wait until back on wi-fi for non-emergency calls. Anyone needing to reach us in an emergency can just call my phone, or if that isn't an option you can always forward calls from one phone to another.
Like many things, you have to evaluate your situation and decide what's best for you.