Best Sim Card for geocaching visitor - London & Scotland

[+E_ZIG_A]

G'day everyone! Later this year we intend to visit Scotland (with a short layover in London). We both have iPhones and would like to use these for Geocaching (to back up our GPS) whilst travelling around Scotland for a few weeks. We need some advice as to which provider/sim card/pre-paid/whathaveyou we should pick up to make this possible. We will be using a lot of data (Geocaching app, as well as various other apps such as Facebook, weather, banking, etc) so need to find a good sim card to use that gives us a few weeks worth of data; to be frank use of phone and sms would be limited so the main thing is the data.

 

Are there any recommended service providers with good data plans, for temporary use? Good coverage, esp travelling through Scotland (doing Edinburgh, then driving over to the Isle of Islay, down to Glasgow and return).

[+Moote]

Best bargain T-Mobile

 

Coverage O2, Vodafone or Orange

 

Avoid 3 Mobile (poor coverage)

 

(NB If any of the content of this post offends anyone, please be aware that it was totally unintentional)

 

[+The Carson Cacherz]

Tesco Mobile sim card (available FOC), £2 per week for unlimited data usage,

 

you'd need to check if it was iphone compatable though

[team tisri]

G'day everyone! Later this year we intend to visit Scotland (with a short layover in London). We both have iPhones and would like to use these for Geocaching (to back up our GPS) whilst travelling around Scotland for a few weeks. We need some advice as to which provider/sim card/pre-paid/whathaveyou we should pick up to make this possible. We will be using a lot of data (Geocaching app, as well as various other apps such as Facebook, weather, banking, etc) so need to find a good sim card to use that gives us a few weeks worth of data; to be frank use of phone and sms would be limited so the main thing is the data.

 

Are there any recommended service providers with good data plans, for temporary use? Good coverage, esp travelling through Scotland (doing Edinburgh, then driving over to the Isle of Islay, down to Glasgow and return).

 

For "a few weeks" you may find a SIM only contract worth exploring, assuming you can get one if you're only visiting the country. The one I use has a 30-day rolling contract, so basically you can dump it with a month's notice. If I used the full allowance it would work out significantly cheaper than pay-as-you-go.

 

If you're not a UK resident you may have problems getting a SIM-only contract and may have to resort to pay as you go.

 

T-mobile seems to give the best data packages (and also operate a fair use policy rather than a limit policy, so if you do go a little over you won't have surcharges).

 

I can't tell you about coverage in Scotland since I've only been to a very small part of Scotland for a very short time.

Edited March 6, 2011 by team tisri

[+The Hornet]

Have a look at http://giffgaff.com/ It piggybacks onto the O2 network. I've used one for a while for mobile internet on various devices and "it does what it says on the tin".

 

I would question one thing that has been said (no offence taken or intended!!) I have found 3 to give very good coverage and is one of the best in terms of data cost. I don't know about Scotland though, maybe other providers are better up there.

[+dibbler69]

I agree with the Hornet about giffgaff. £10 gets you 250 mins, unlimited texts and unlimited data.

 

[+maiawalli]

Just a note about Reception on Islay and the west coast. It's going to be very patchy wherever you are. I work in this area quite a lot with my dive team and although we all use different phones and networks, there's large areas where there's no signal at all on any network. Generally the towns and villages will have reception, though it will be cellular ( and slow ) rather than 3G (pretty fast)

I use O2 which is pretty reasonable for reception in those areas and manage to use my phone for caching by planning ahead and downloading maps in areas of reception. It can be quite frustrating if you get near a cache and then can't download the details as there's no reception. Unfortunately I can't recommend a sim card but any of the phone shops in London will be able to help.

It's beautiful up that way, and caching or not you'll have a great time. Islay is a fantastic place and there's no shortage of Whisky to imbibe in. I recommend Duffys in Bowmore for the Whisky and the Bowmore hotel for the food though there's plenty of other places as well.

Enjoy! And Happy caching.

[+Teuchters]

I use my iPhone4 for caching details using the usual geocaching apps that are available. My (micro) sim is provided by Tesco which uses the same cellular network as O2.

O2 has (possibly?) the best coverage in the north of Scotland with Vodaphone in a similar position. 3 is generally accepted as not being so good for coverage up here.

(All views are a personal opinion only and should not be construed as a statement of fact)

You can get a sim only contract for between £15 and £25.00 - the cost depends on how many calls and the amount of data you wish to receive. For instance 1GB data but only 250 mins calls etc. I'm sure you can find the supermarket website to get the details.

My caching partner has a 3GS iPhone with a normal sized sim -I don't know which one you have.

 

As previous posters have said, coverage can be patchy, once away from the main centres but even in in "remoter" spots, wifi at hotels etc can set you up for the day - depending on where you stay there can be a charge for wifi access.

[+Mark+Karen]

tbh I wouldn't bother, at least not for data.

 

You'd be better off buying wifi access whereever you are staying - or finding somewhere with WiFi and download a pocket query with the caches you want to do, and then before you set out also download the map tiles and photos to your phone. Then switch the data communication in your phone off completely!

 

In general, coverage for data is woeful, unless you are smack bang in a city centre, even slightly rural location, e.g. just a mile from the edge of a city, you can have trouble getting a decent enough signal to download maps, post logs etc. With Scotlands terrain you might as well forget about it!

 

I'm off to Scotland myself next month and I'm certainly not going to be counting on the mobile phone network to work at all!

[+E_ZIG_A]

Thanks everyone for the responses; I really appreciate it! Being only new (and addicted...) to the Geocaching game, I really want to maximise my caching whilst overseas! I'll look into the suggestions people have made and I'll have to learn a bit more about Pocket Queries by the sound of it!

[+lifechooser]

I would go for giffgaff too, which I think you need to get in advance. Otherwise, Tesco is probably best as you can just walk into a store and grab one. Tesco is the UK's largest supermarket.

 

Coverage is better in the UK than in America and Australia, as the country is more densely populated, so nearly the entire country has good phone signal. 3G is more variable, but you won't have any issues at all near London or Edinburgh. Don't expect too much in the way of signal if you go bush in the highlands though.

 

I would plan the Scottish caches in advance, and practice signalless caching before you come. You may need different software, or to enter co-ordinates manually. I would not anticipate any problems at all if you are within 50 miles of London though.

 

http://www.o2.co.uk/coveragechecker

[+Mark+Karen]

As the OP wants to use their iPhone then the Groundspeak App will be suitable for their purposes. Once you've downloaded a PQ you need to save the map tiles for every cache you plan to find, once you've done that you can use it offline. At the moment there's no way in the app to force it to be offline so you'd have to disable data access from within your phone settings - a good idea while you're abroad anyway.

 

PS the OP doesn't say what sort of iPhone they have but if it's an iPhone 4 then that will need a micro-SIM instead of the normal SIMs you get with PAYG packages, these usually incur an extra cost, because iPhone users are assumed to use much more data.

Edited March 8, 2011 by markhewitt1978