When travelling internationally, and wanting mobile connectivity, the question arises whether to purchase a Roaming Package from your Canadian cellular supplier, or obtain a SIM card in the location where you travel. A recent trip to Europe gave me fresh perspective on this longstanding discussion. Conventional wisdom suggests obtaining a local SIM card upon arrival at your destination is the preferred route unless you plan to use your smartphone very little. There are dealers in airports and other major transportation hubs selling local cellular services, and they will ably set up your phone for you with a local SIM.
The alternative is to purchase a Roaming Plan from your carrier before departure. These vary in content and price depending on your carrier, and for Europe range from about $50 - $150. These packages allow you to make a small number of phone calls, send a few dozen texts, and consume a few tens of MB of data within a geographic zone. There is no charge for incoming texts. Most of Europe is covered by a single zone.
Our experience was not so smooth, however. We purchased a €25 SIM card and the dealer inserted it and set up Pat's phone for the local network. Subsequently we added €10 to the account to have more data available. I could find no way to access the phone network to apply this sum to a data allowance, and eventually called in to their support network to apply the sum against a data allotment. At this point, I can not share the data with other devices. A bit more digging locates the network password information, so I apply that to the appropriate settings on the phone. Bingo! I can now tether the phone.
Within 24 hours, tethering is cut off - not available from this supplier. Next day we travel to northern France; no service. Three days later in Belgium, again no service. Purchasing additional SIM cards would have been prohibitive.
I had purchased a $50 roaming package from Telus including texts, voice minutes and data for my phone prior to departing Canada, so had basis for comparison.
We found WiFi readily available during all of our stops. It was available at each of the hotels in which we stayed, most of the restaurants and pubs in each of the towns we visited, and in many of the venues, museums and historic sites we toured. With a small modification in our daily routine, and having suitable software on our phones, it was very possible to manage within the allotment offered by Telus. We planned our day, and destinations each morning before venturing out for the day, capturing venues, sites and addresses of interest, and putting them into the GPS app on the phone. This ensured our day's destinations were readily available to us.
Conclusion: Unless staying in one country for long periods, the purchase of a Local SIM in Europe may not be the best option.