inexpensive SIM card

[donald1]

Hi Guys, I will be bringing my old cell phone (Nokia) for the first time ever on holiday. Normally I just use skype to contact home, etc, but this trip will be
needing a cell to receive calls from a local acquaintance as he will be traveling around.
Can anyone with cellphone savvy ( I am electronically stunted) suggest an inexpensive SIM card to use for 2 weeks making/receiving probably 2-3 calls?
I tried the search but everything seems to be Ipad oriented.
Thanks.

[ceejay]

Go to any 7-11 and ask for the cheapest SIM they've got. Shouldn't cost more than 50 baht. Get them to set it up for you (they'll set the language to English among other things). Ask to have a credit of 100 baht put on it - you probably won't use even that, unless the calls are long.

[bucknaway]

Yes, that is the easiest solution! Great Advice!

Just make doubly sure that your old phone isn't / wasn't locked by any particular network provider you may have been supplied the phone from previously ( as I found to my own cost when I tried to do the same a while back) as if so when you insert the new Sim it won't work - if it is locked you can always easily get it unlocked at any number of places but I think that's probably something you're better getting done at home to ensure that it was possible to unlock it in the first place ok rather than waiting to find out you can't when you get to Thailand as happened me :-(.

[donald1]

Thank You guys. Great advice and to the point. Much appreciated. :happy7:
This is why I really like this board.
I arrive in one week for 2 weeks and will head over to meet Neal, and maybe bump into
some of you guys.

[yaraboy]

If your phone is locked (likely) go to MBK, Mobile Section where you should get it done for 200-300 baht...........takes 10 minutes at the most. Can get a SIM card there as well and they will tell you if phone is locked or not.

[fedssocr]

you also need to make sure that your phone operates on the right frequencies. US phones don't work in many other places unless they are multiband. I bought a cheap-ish Motorola unlocked quad band phone a few years ago for something like $30 from Newegg.com or a similar site.

When I got to Thailand I just went to a DTAC store and got one of their prepaid SIM cards for about 300 baht at the time I think.

[Gaybutton]

The least expensive SIM card I know about is a 1-2-Call card, available at any convenience store for 99 baht. If your phone won't work in Thailand, you can easily buy a phone for around 1000 baht or even less for a used phone, but it would be only a basic phone. You would have to go to an internet shop to use Skype. You can buy time cards for 1-2-Call in increments of 50 baht.

[anonone]

Good advice given so far....spot on.

Another tip, find what prefix to use when dialing international calls to lower the cost. For my 1-2-Call sim, it is 005+country code+. So for calls to the US it would be 005 001 xxx xxx xxxx

It makes the calls much cheaper and I have always had good quality. I have no idea why or how it works, it must route through a different network or something.

The VoIP world seems to be divided between many vendors with reluctance to establish interoperability and some The protocols used in VoIP communication are still considered fairly complex in comparison to most of the other protocols involved in Internet applications.
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