On holiday - best prepaid package

[JohnCrawford]

Hi everybody,

I'll be coming down to SA on a nice three week holiday tomorrow. I plan on buying a South African sim card as I don’t want to pay bloody expensive global roaming fees. I’m looking for something that will include not only air time but also broadband. I plan on using it a fair bit. My phone is a HTC Desire and is not network blocked.

Any ideas on some good deals?

Many thanks,
John

[Jola]

8ta and Cell C are the cheapest, but they don't have data cover everywhere - where are you going to be ?

Cell C have a 12 month 3GB data package for R399, and you can also add airtime to that as required.

But they only have 3G in the big cities, only slow 2G elsewhere.

If you want 3G everywhere you can go for Vodacom, but it would cost double (calls and data).

[AstroTurf]

Go for vodacom if you are going all over the place (best coverage) or if you plan to stay in a city only, cellc is cheapest.

[ajax]

You may need help from a local with registering your simcard (RICA), I'm not sure what the rules are with tourists.

Coverage will most likely determine your provider of choice. All the providers have good (reasonable) prepaid offerings, so as Jola said, let us know where you will be using the connection.

[lotus123]

Hi John

Your best bet would be CellC.

Buy a SIM, get it Rica'ed (http://www.cellc.co.za/about/rica) and then load R50 airtime. You'll get R50 worth of call minutes and 500mb of data. Just remember the bundle expires every Sunday night, so you have to do this again on Monday morning. The airtime stays, though). There's also 50 SMS and 50 free CellC to CellC minutes as well with this deal.

Not sure how you handle the ID and proof of residence if you're a visitor, but good luck and have a good holiday.

[JohnCrawford]

Many thanks for the replies guys. I wasn't aware that I had to "provide proof of residence" to get a sim card (that is something new that has happened since I moved from SA). I'll sort that out.

[ajax]

Cell C prepaid with "recharge rewards" is the best value for money as long you have 3G coverage to make use of the whoosh (high speed data).
But do keep maybe a Vodacom sim handy as backup.

[Ol' Mean Bastid]

If you're on a foreign passport RICA should not be a big issue as all they need is your passport details.

Given that you're only going to be here for three weeks, buy a prepaid sim if you're travelling around the country then best stick with Vodacom (they've just reduced their rates), if you're going to be static then check if you will have CellC coverage where you are going to be based.

I doubt you're looking at GB's of data during your time here, so it's probably all going to be much of a muchness

[ginggs]

Given that you're only going to be here for three weeks, buy a prepaid sim if you're travelling around the country then best stick with Vodacom (they've just reduced their rates), if you're going to be static then check if you will have CellC coverage where you are going to be based.

Vodacom's new rates only effective as of September 19.