{"id":6616,"date":"2014-12-02T19:09:09","date_gmt":"2014-12-03T03:09:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/first2board.com\/wanderlusty\/?p=6616"},"modified":"2014-12-02T19:09:09","modified_gmt":"2014-12-03T03:09:09","slug":"local-sim-india-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/first2board.com\/wanderlusty\/2014\/12\/local-sim-india-edition\/","title":{"rendered":"Local SIM: India Edition"},"content":{"rendered":"

i, unfortunately, didn’t pick up a SIM card at Delhi airport because i thought the hotel ride was waiting outside, and when i discovered he wasn’t (and needed to call), discovered you can’t reenter the arrivals hall! i had heard that Indian SIM cards require several hours to activate — which i found to be true — but remember seeing a sign on at least one of the cell phone provider booths that they had instant activation. oh well.<\/p>\n

luckily, there was a Vodafone store near my hotel in Connaught Place<\/a>. note that many stores in India do not open until later in the day; this one didn’t open until 10:30.<\/p>\n

\"FullSizeRender\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

purchasing<\/h3>\n

getting the SIM card was not difficult, but you will need a passport photo (thanks prepaidwithdata wiki<\/a> for the heads up) and address of your hotel. they will make a photocopy of your passport and you’ll need to sign in several places on a form. be sure to ask for the right SIM card size; they had nano-SIMs available.<\/p>\n

the 1GB plan i bought was 255 rupees and the SIM card i believe was somewhere around 100 rs, or a total cost of about $5.75. (SO CHEAP)<\/p>\n

\"IMG_3246\"<\/a><\/p>\n

activation<\/h3>\n

there are several steps to activating the card. i was told it would take up to four hours for the card itself to join the network — in my case it was around three. once it switches from “No Signal” to having service and you get the first welcome message (the 1:18 PM one), you need to call 117<\/strong> to verify your address with an agent to activate service. the representative at the store wrote down for me exactly the address she put on the form so i was able to just read it off. there is service in English (as with most things in India). you will get a second text message (1:37) once the card is fully up.<\/p>\n

unfortunately, the representative at the store did not set up the data plan i bought so i had to return to the store. she loaded my money (3:16 message) and set up the data plan, which took about 20 minutes to activate (the 3:38 message).<\/p>\n

service<\/h3>\n

service waffled between 3G and EDGE, but turning Airplane Mode on and off usually get me back on 3G. data speeds on EDGE were very slow (almost unusable); 3G was quite speedy — faster than hotel wifi at times, even. the SIM card is LTE-enabled, but i never got LTE service.<\/p>\n

i saw a sign in the store that said there was free data roaming across India (which i verified with the representative) but i texted “roaming” to 111 like i saw on the sign just in case, but i think the reply was purely informational — the roaming capability is already enabled by default.<\/p>\n

i turned on Data Roaming in my phone’s Settings (Settings –> Cellular) and my phone was able to automatically roam on the Airtel network (which got service in some places where Vodafone was weak). i didn’t seem to get charged any penalties for this, so changing that setting could only help. note that iMessage was unable to activate, i guess because i was unable to receive international texts.<\/p>\n

you can check your data usage by dialing *111#, then choosing option 6 and then option 2 (menu options may change; just follow the prompts).<\/p>\n

you’ll get these roaming text messages as you travel from state to state; they’re safe to ignore but a cool way to watch your progress around the country.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_3669\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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