[Noisebridge-congress] Data / Cell service and SIM cards in Germany

[Rubin Abdi]

Every CCC event I get asked, "How do I German sparkle party cellular
internet?" and every year I point people to the same place but it's
generally too late as you're already in Germany and without internet access
and too fucking high on Mate to figure out how to navigate a website in
German.

The things you need to know are...

0 - If you are a T-Mobile US customer, and have a normal non-prepaid
account, you have free 2G data roaming world wide. Call them to double
check. In most cases to get this working you simply need to turn on data
roaming in your phone (which is generally off by default). Keep in mind
calling while traveling internationally will still cost you an arm and a
leg. 2G isn't great but it's enough to deal with email and maps. If reading
10 more steps is daunting, switching to T-Mobile might be your best bet.

1 - Bookmark this page, if not this whole site for future travels.
http://prepaid-data-sim-card.wikia.com/wiki/Germany

2 - If your phone isn't unlocked, or isn't quad band in some form, you're
fucked. Buying phones from a shitty carrier (such as AT&T) typically means
its locked and I unfortunately can't help you traverse the hell that it is
to get it unlocked. Additionally if you're with Sprint or Verizon, your
phone is most likely not GSM and pretty useless outside of the US, Canada,
and Japan. Check out this list of which carriers operate on which bands.
Keep in mind if your phone doesn't do 3G in the bands listed for a provider
but does to LTE, it will still work but will either be really slow or
really fast, and suck at coverage when the only thing available is 3G.
http://prepaid-data-sim-card.wikia.com/wiki/Germany#Coverage_and_speed

3 - You can buy SIM cards almost anywhere. Good spots to get them are Media
Markts, Saturns, and some of the bigger grocery chains, but you can also
just walk into a liquor store. You might even end up being lucky at the
airport and find a kiosk with an English speaker who knows how to help
travelers.

4 - The majority of providers you will find are MVNOs, which just lease
time off of other bigger networks. Check out this handy table for some more
details on them and costs.
http://prepaid-data-sim-card.wikia.com/wiki/Germany#Survey_of_MVNOs

5 - Some of these cards will come preloaded with something like €10 - €15
of credit, however if you don't want to squabble it all being charged per
megabyte, remember to apply that credit to a data package after registering
online, before actually plugging in the card and using it.

6 - After acquiring a SIM card it must be registered. This typically
happens online, so you must plan on having a laptop (with Google translate)
with net access after grabbing the card. Trying to register on over wifi on
your phone is horrible and you will hate life. The majority of the
providers will ask for a legitimately real German address, and sometimes
even a valid land line phone number. If you know how to Google you should
be able to figure this out.

7 - Many of these providers will allow you to reload the card later online
through a credit card. Make sure you actually use whatever name you have
for your credit card as the name for the account with the provider. It's
still prepaid but they'll use your account name when charging the card, and
wont let you change it later on when realizing you've painted yourself into
a corner with a fake name because you're some bad ass hacker from 'Merica.

8 - You can also buy credit in cash, however I've only once been able to
find a store selling it for my provider and got it entered in correctly
into my phone. It's just generally easier to either charge online or buy
new SIM cards and active one after the previous one runs out of data.

9 - SIM cards eventually expire. Generally the length of time is 6 or 12
months. They expire either from non-use, not being topped off, or not
interacting with the network. None of the carriers list out what their
criteria is for use, so it's hard to say how you could keep your number and
SIM active for your next trip. If you want to be an elite h4cker, might I
suggest looking into Twilio for maintaining a persistent number.

10 - Before you leave the states, figure out which size of SIM card your
phone takes (
http://unevensidewalks.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/sim-card-sizes-mini-micro-nano-text-350x237.jpg
and
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8d/GSM_Micro_SIM_Card_vs._GSM_Mini_Sim_Card_-_Break_Apart.svg
). Keep this in mind when you're shopping for cards, as they'll often come
in different flavors and not offer all the sizes out of the box. Unless
you're crafty with a blade or scissors, you might benefit from bringing
along a cheap SIM card cutter off of Amazon.

With all that being said, I've generally had good luck with Blau. Their
online registration process used to be horrible but now isn't so bad if
you're just running the Google translate extension. I believe their SIM
card starter packs come with €15 credit, €10 of which can go to a 1GB
package.

Last bit here is a tip. When traveling you will generally use more data
than when you're at home. This is mainly because you're using more maps and
searching for more bull shit to go do. Try to precache maps, and turn off
syncing for things you know you're not using as much (like your work
email). Setup some sort of monitor on your data usage, so that when you do
run out it's not a total surprise and you're not suck somewhere wondering
how the fucking trains work.

-- 
Rubin
rubin at starset.net
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