Whether you’re traveling for a few days, a few months, or planning to stay long term, chances are you’d like to be reachable and have a mobile internet connection. One of the ways to do this: getting a cell phone in Germany.
Luckily some laws changed in Europe which makes international travel with one data plan possible and fairly cheap. It’s also much easier.
Germany though is a bit behind, digitally. Not only are plans somewhat expensive, but coverage can be extremely weak out of metro areas and actually obtaining a SIM card is tightly regulated. Therefore, the steps required are below, as well as some suggestions for plans plus an explanation on the new laws and how it affects residents or long term visitors on EU plans.
WHAT KIND OF PHONE DO I NEED?
Luckily this question isn’t nearly as complicated as it used to be 10 years, even 5 years, ago. I’ve never done it, but once upon a time American travellers would rent European compatible phones, or purchase very expensive and not widely available “world phones” or “European phones” with not much choice on the market. The issue is the radio bands and cell frequencies developed in the US are CDMA standard, while Europe and most of the rest of the world run on GSM. Since these are picked up by antenna, it’s important to note that the phone itself needs to be compatible, as picking up a SIM across the ocean might not be good enough.
Recently, phones in the US seem to be more often than not GSM ready upon production. T Mobile, AT&T and Verizon provide phones which can travel back and forth (and the corresponding expensive international roaming plans to go with them). The larger manufacturers, Apple, Samsung and Google, all make their phones internationally ready now and the newer models will also be able to roam on LTE while in Europe.
Bottom line: if you’ve purchased a phone from a major manufacturer since 2015, you probably don’t have any reason to worry whether or not the phone itself will work abroad. If you’re still worried, check here.
CAN I USE MY AMERICAN PLAN IN EUROPE?
Probably. Especially as a visitor and not a long term (6+months) visitor.
If your plan or provider has the option for international travel, I suggest:
- If you can separate data, voice and SMS, opt to only get data, and budget in roughly 1-5mb of data per day on your trip (this is on the high end, and assumes you will use some sort of navigation app for part of the day)
- If you’re concerned about making calls, there are apps for that (which only require data or WiFi)
- Make sure your provider knows your travel dates, in case they have to manually turn international roaming on or off.
- Give them a list of countries you intend to visit, in case rates or availability changes
- Confirm the steps needed once you are in country to activate your international plan
Usually it’s only a matter of toggling the “use international roaming” option within your data and connectivity settings once you turn on your phone after landing for the first time. Then, usually a power off-on cycle will do the trick and you’re good to go.
MY PROVIDER DOES NOT HAVE AN INTERNATIONAL PLAN
If you absolutely must be connected at all times, and do not want to rely on WiFi hotspots, airports have cell phone kiosks with SIMS, carious data plans and phones available. In Germany, this is an expensive and probably time consuming route to take, as noted below.
Note: if you are going this route, you need to read “How to Get a SIM Card” below in order to understand the activation process.
SHOULD I USE MY AMERICAN PLAN IN EUROPE?
Are you traveling for less than a month? Visiting 1-3 countries? Then yes, most likely that’s the best solution.
Are you traveling for 6 months across multiple countries? You should probably consider getting a SIM card from one of those countries.
Are you moving to Germany/Europes? No, buy a new plan and get a new phone number.
HOW TO GET A SIM CARD
Here is where the fun begins. The law changed in July 2017 and it has been, not exaggerating, a mess for everyone who doesn’t have a German address. I think it’s also been a mess for those with an address in some cases as well.
The law: in order to activate a German SIM card, you must have a German address to register it to. In addition, Telekom in particular wants to know that you actually live / reside at the address and will ask to see the Meldebestätigung (everything is going to eventually come back to that document). If you don’t have an address in Germany, you are not going to get a SIM card. If you have a SIM from another European country you’re actually going to be ok with traveling in Germany, as you can use your home plan at the same rates while roaming, as you would at home (because of the law change in June 2017).
If you don’t have an address then, what do you do? My suggestions:
- Ask a friend with an address
- Use your hotel / AirBnB address
- Another address you are connected with, which does physically exist
Other than Telekom, the other providers are probably not going to verify the address (based on anecdotal evidence), but they may do a quick check to make sure it’s a real address. They are definitely going to ask for ID though so you must also have your passport on hand at the time of activation, or another national ID card with your picture and name (and probably date of birth as well).
If you opt for a long term contract, usually two years in duration, be aware that they will always contain the three month cancellation clause, like many contracts in Germany. It is extremely difficult to get out of and often the contracts will auto renew for another two years on the expiration date. So mark this on your calendar just in case you might need a change.
WHERE CAN I USE MY NEW NUMBER?
Good news here! As of June 2017, if you have an EU plan, you can now explore Europe using one phone number and one plan. The (EU) law requires providers to eliminate high roaming fees or extra international plans (at high prices) when traveling throughout the EU. In my case then, here’s what happens when I leave Germany:
- If I’m driving, and I cross a border, about 5-10 minutes after that crossing I get a welcome text from Telekom stating I’m in a new country and all my home rates and speeds apply (though I’m out of luck in low signal areas)
That’s if I have international roaming turned on, which I always do
I then see no extra charges or indications that I was even out of country on my monthly bill
If I’m flying, I turn on my phone upon landing and the same procedure above happens.
My data cap is used the same in the new country as it was in Germany, meaning if I have 2GB per month total, and I use 1.5 before vacation, I have .5GB left for my entire trip.
At home, if I run over, I then get reduced speeds. If I run out of data on a trip, the same process of reduced speeds happen.
As a side note: this is what real Net Neutrality looks like. All traffic is treated equally with no throttling because of “reasons.” End soapbox.
What used to happen?
- Cross border, get welcome text message
- The welcome message used to contain three different options for “turning on” cell service, and it varied depending upon which “country group” I was in
- Choose one of the options and text the code to the number provided
- Wait 10-30 minutes
- Receive message stating service was turned on
- Service is not turned on, wait a few hours
- Service is on!
- But it’s soooo sloooow
- Take pictures, post to Instagram
- Immediately run out of data
- Text the next day (once per 24 hours was my usual) for more data
- Receive bill, some angst occurs.
My experience was of course related to many variables, the chief among them being my provider of choice and secondly my phone. I use Google phones, but there was a year I was using a Huawei, which was nice, but not great.
SHOW ME THE EXCEPTIONS.
Outgoing calls and SMS in an EU country, other than your own, are charged at domestic rates, and some plans may place restrictions on the amount of data you may use while roaming. Contract and pay-as-you-go plans are treated fairly equally in this respect, but depending on country-specific rules, your plan may differ across borders. In Germany, the plans are equal in terms of restrictions on data usage and prices, meaning the same rules apply to your plan inside borders as well as outside.
When choosing your German plan, and you know you might want to scoot down to the alps, double check what it says about coverage around Switzerland:
As Switzerland is a popular destination, you should be aware that right in the middle of Europe you might be hit with a large bill. Even if you are not going to Switzerland, but you’re traveling around the borders, check which network you’re connecting to to avoid the CH networks.
The UK (including Gibraltar) is going to be an interesting case in a year or two when all Brexit issues are hammered out. There is no word yet on how this “Roam Like at Home” plan is going to be handled over there.
Calls from your home country (such as Germany) to another EU country do not get special treatment and long distance rates apply as normal.
If you are roaming for “a long time” as deemed by your provider (a couple of months) they have the right to cut your service, forcing you over onto your new home country network plans.
Finally, and I didn’t realize this until I was doing the final research for this piece, this law applies to EU territories as well, for example in the Caribbean and parts of Africa or South America. Pretty cool.
- http://prepaid-data-sim-card.wikia.com/wiki/Germany
- http://prepaid-data-sim-card.wikia.com/wiki/European_Union
- https://www.reddit.com/r/germany/wiki/living/connectivity
