Greece: Cheep 3G Mobile Internet access via pay-as-you-go

In recent your Greece has invested heavily in Mobile technology. Cosmote, Vodafone GR and Wind GR are the main companies that provide mobile Internet access on the move. There are however restrictions with Cosmote and Vodafone in the form of contract agreements that are goverened with an additional restriction of having to provide a Greek Tax code before you can use their service. The exception is Wind.

‘Wind’ is an Athens based mobile telephony company that invested 88 million euros into its start-up business and is predicted as becoming the main mobile Internet provider in Greece (Reuters)

Prepaid: Wind has two prepaid sim cards that can be bought at their stores or any ‘Periptero Stand’ on the side walk the cards are available for 2 or 7 days. Costing 5 euro and 15 euro respectively with a 2GB & 7GB fair usage policy. http://www.wind.com.gr

These prepaid WIND ADSM packs might be the only available solution for travellers wanting cheap mobile Internet access within Greece.

Coverage: Cosmote covers almost all of Greece with 3GSM and most cities with HSPA (High Speed Packet Access), Vodafone covers most of the cities with HSPA.

However Wind also covers most of the Greek cities and its HSPA (High Speed Packet Access) coverage is enabled all over its 3G network.

Hardware: Wind also offers competitive prices for their dongles but say that their prepaid Sims can easily fit into an unlocked dongle quoting the ‘Huawei E220 USB HSPA’ as the preferred choice.

Looking at eBay the ‘Huawei E220 USB HSPA’ unlocked is going at around $75.00 (£52). This unit combined with the Pay-As-You-Go option from Wind looks to be a very competitive option.

According to http://www.howardforums.com/. The Huawei E220 USB HSPA modems can be upgraded to support download speeds up to 7.2Mbps and increased upload speeds with HSUPA with a simple firmware update so if you go for this modem, get the USB one which is future-proof.

Special Deals: Wind are also offering a prepaid 2 week unlimited package including hardware for 99 euros with an option to extend for a further 1 week at 10 euros.

Conclusion: The competition amongst the top three providers and a market place of 10 million citizens in Greece. Has brought prices amazingly down in the past few months! Vodafone is expected to lower its prices in line with Wind ADSM competitive pricing structure, very soon. However they are still not able to compete with the Prepaid market that Wind ADSM currently dominates.

Track back David Mutlow http://www.greekisland-hopping.com