I have some friends in Germany who have been using much cheaper Spanish pay-as-you-go SIMs for the last couple of years. Admittedly not as their daily drivers though - they use them intermittently for hotspots when they don't have access to decent wired/wifi
My “solution” for a while was a stack of prepaid throwaway SIM cards with unlimited data from a nearby country and a cheap USB powered 4G hotspot in my bag powered by a power bank. They would last about a month.
They will charge you for roaming if you're clearly abusing the system (ie, not living in the place you bought the SIM). How long that takes to happen depends on the individual provider - if they didn't then everyone would predictably just use cheaper eastern Europe SIMs.
Agree but despite the roaming at times it can be way cheaper. For instance paying for BElgium operator (not necessarily the cheapest) you can buy an unlimited 5G (limited to 90G in BE without throttle) which in roaming is 31G costing 25 Eur.
I’ve also seen some cheaper providers than this in DE but they limit 5G to 50mbps :(
Yep. I’ve gamed it a lot, but it’s a pain in the arse.
You can do the trick of buying up a stack of prepaid SIM cards when travelling and using a cheap dongle, but it’s a lot of effort and eventually stops working - probably due to the IMEI being banned though I’ve not confirmed that.
It’s less effort to just snag a new local SIM upon landing at most airports and using it as a hotspot.
Or, you know. Rolling out WiFi as a public service. Which would be kinda cool.