Roaming Charges for Turkey Extortionate

[Burakiosaurus]

EE's roaming charges for Turkey are Extortionate !

£7.84 a day for 500MB, so a 10 day holiday is going to cost you an extra £78.40 on top of what you pay monthly!

So many other operators provide better deals, that I'm shocked how poorly EE handle roaming to Turkey. 

Anyone else figured out a better way to sort out their roaming to Turkey?

[Philbarber1]

Same for roaming package 🤷🏻‍♂️

[neety41]

Yes buy a sim on arrival-better price 

[neety41]

Sky mobile do turkey for £2 a day 

[Roach17]

I got an estimate from airalo costing £6-50 for 3gb of data. Was just enough as Wi-Fi is free everywhere. 

[neety41]

Yes I’m here now and wifi is superb-bought 2gb esim and still got 1.74 after a week!

Sent from Outlook for iOS<>

[Joe1211]

Agree with the Airalo suggestion. It’s very easy and very cheap. It is an e-sim and for phones that support e-sims, like our iPhones, you just buy a data package from Airalo online (I think we paid £6-£7 for 6GB!) and then add that e-sim to you phone with a few clicks. Easy. Then use that sim for data. Keep your main number the same. It worked a treat. We do this every time we go to Turkey now. I can even use it to VPN to work (sadly!) from there! 

[TravellingMan25]

Maybe change to O2, they cost £6 per day data, calls, text based on UK allowance.  O2 has other problems but I wonder why I switched to EE

[AC03]

Buying a local sim to use in turkey isn’t a good idea. 

Best use an eSIM where the sim number doesn’t originate in turkey and use roaming. 

I used yesim and paid 3EUR for data on my phone. (First time user/new email address)

by using a local Turkish SIM card will a)Likely to cost more if purchased at an airport. b)The phone IMEI could become blocked for use in Turkey

https://istanbul.tips/detailed-manual-on-how-to-unlock-imei-in-turkey/

[bristolian]

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@AC03 wrote:

Buying a local sim to use in turkey isn’t a good idea.

Best use an eSIM where the sim number doesn’t originate in turkey and use roaming. 

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You're confusing two different concepts here.

When you are roaming, you're using your "home" network SIM and thus bringing your own UK number. Contacting you is done via a UK number, you pickup the incoming interntional leg. Using a local SIM means having a local (Turkish in this case) number.

Any SIM can be electronic or physical.

[AC03]

I know the concept of SIM cards and e sim. 

Are people aware that in turkey you have to pay a tax on mobile phones ?

If you use a foreign mobile phone, with a Turkish SIM card, it will work for 120 days. Within that time, you must pay a tax and register it, or it will be cut off.

If you buy a Turkish SIM card and use it with your mobile phone, you have 120 days from the day of your arrival in Turkey to pay a mobile phone use tax and register your foreign mobile phone in the Central Equipment Identity Register. Once your phone is blocked, you will only be able to access emergency numbers.

Therefore purchase an eSIM that roams on the Turkish networks. 

This is the only country I’ve come across that blocks phones when a tax is not paid. 

https://international.ticaret.edu.tr/phone-device-registration/#:~:text=If%20you%20buy%20a%20Turkish....