Guidelines

Basic Objectives

This wiki to inform travellers about the available prepaid SIM cards with data in as many countries and regions as possible. It is intended for impartial information, not an opportunity to market or promote specific products.

Certain basic guidelines need to be respected:

1. Strictly no advertisements: Even if you are affiliated to a particular product, please try to present it with plain facts, not marketing language. Please try to present all prices and fees in real terms, e.g. "€5 to €30", not "from €5", and please avoid misleading indications of price and misleading omissions. If taxes or other fees are unavoidably added on top of published prices, please make this clear.
2. Only SIM card issuers: Include only MNOs (mobile network operators) and MVNOs (mobile virtual network operators) that issue their own SIM cards (including eSIMs). Third party retailers that sell or rent out SIM cards or equipment should be mentioned only in the context of where to obtain SIM cards, either generally in a country or for a specific MNO or MVNO.
3. Avoid buzzwords: For example, please don’t try to call a throttled package “unlimited” or UMTS-based technology “4G”, as some providers do. The only purpose of this is to mislead consumers. If you can’t avoid using any potentially-misleading terms, then please surround them with "quotation marks" to show that you are quoting a provider's own words.
4. Data only: The subject of this wiki is prepaid with data. Please avoid including charges for voice calls and texts (SMS) unless they form part of a package that includes data.
5. Prepaid only: Although postpaid contracts can offer better prices in some countries, they are almost never available to short-term visitors to a country, not least as they usually need a local bank account and/or credit history.
6. No providers that are closed to non-residents: Please do not include providers that are unavailable to non-residents, for example providers requiring a local ID as well as online-only operators unless they can send a SIM card to a local hotel address or an address abroad.
7. GSM providers only: Only GSM devices allow you to swap SIM cards. Therefore please only list GSM operators and exclude all other types of providers on CDMA or WIMAX or whatever system they might be on. Showing choices that GSM users simply can’t get confuses readers. CDMA-operators are listed only if they are an option like having 3G on UMTS or to show that they are not an option. 4G/LTE technology has the potential to bridge this gap and many non-GSM providers start to supply "world phones" with a GSM SIM card slot as well, which opens up GSM to CDMA users, but not vice-versa.

Manual of Style

The language of this wiki is English and only English. This includes not only words, but also orthographic conventions on punctuation, dates, times, numbers and special characters such as currency symbols.

When writing the name of a brand or product that corresponds to a dictionary word in the local language, it can be helpful to write an English translation in italics, particularly if you are a native speaker of the local language who understands the semantic or cultural significance.

Don't worry if your English isn't perfect. It's far more beneficial to have the latest information in poor English than not to have the information at all. A native English speaker will often edit and correct your language errors.

Larger wikis such as Wikipedia and Wikitravel have their own manuals of style, which are written by consensus over many years by a very large number of editors and administrators. Unlike Wikipedia and Wikitravel, this wiki doesn't have a sufficient number of editors and administrators to form an impartial manual of style by consensus. Wikitravel, being likewise a guide for travellers, is closest in nature to this wiki, so please follow Wikitravel's manual of style as closely as possible when editing this wiki, including in particular:

Language

There are several varieties of English, with US English differing in spelling and grammar from the other varieties. Following Wikitravel's guidelines on spelling, please use the local spelling and vocabulary in each English-speaking country. In some cases, you can borrow vocabulary from another English-speaking country. For example, the Australian English word "flagfall" is particularly relevant in a telecommunications context in several other countries such as Spain.

Time and Date

Both 24-hour time and 12-hour time are used widely in English, but 24-hour time is understood more globally than am and pm suffixes, which is why it is used for example in international airline and train timetables. Therefore please follow Wikitravel's manual of style for time and date by writing most times in 24-hour time.

Most English-speaking countries write dates as day month year, except for the United States which uses month day year. Within paragraphs of text, please write dates in d Mmmm yyyy format, for example "15 June 2017", not "15/06/2017". In tables or anywhere else space is restricted, please use DD-MMM-YYYY format, for example "15-JUN-2017". Please do not use numeric months or 2-digit years such as "08/06/22", because this can make the entire date ambiguous in an international context.

Prices

Wikitravel's manual of style for currency and Wikipedia's manual of style for currency contain detailed guidelines about how to write monetary amounts and prices, for example whether a currency symbol precedes or follows a price, whether to insert a space, to use a decimal point rather than decimal comma, and whether or not a local currency symbol (as opposed to an ISO4217 currency code) is sufficiently well-known to use it in a guide for travellers. When writing in English, please apply the English manual of style consistently to all countries and territories that use a particular currency, for example with multinational currencies such as EUR, GBP, USD and XCD.

Numerals

Please follow Wikipedia's manual of style for numerals. In particular, please remember that English uses a decimal point, not a decimal comma, and uses a comma as a thousands separator, for example 5,000.25 for five thousand and a quarter.

Guidelines for a country to be added

For a country to be added, it must be an internationally-recognised sovereign state, a dependent territory (e.g. Gibraltar) or a part of a country whose networks are substantially separate from the rest of the country (e.g. Alaska, Crimea, Hong Kong, Macau, French overseas departments) irrespective of de jure or de facto sovereignty. The ISO 3166-1 country short name should be used, except where a shorter version is in everyday usage, e.g. "United Kingdom" instead of "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" and "Russia" instead of "Russian Federation".

Country articles should be thoroughly researched on the internet and on location, backed up by multiple sources and confirmed by travellers. We rely on local residents as well as visitors because both often have different points of view. Please try to ensure that country pages include the following information whenever possible:

• Basic information needs to be available about all major operators, employed technology, coverage, speeds, availability of service, regulations, restrictions, etc....
• This information needs to be backed up by travellers who were able to buy a SIM card and use this service on location or by published articles. They may derive from travel forums, guide books, press material or one's own experience.
• Finally, all major operators need to publish their rates and offers on a their web site, social media or anywhere else on the internet to be confirmed and checked for updates.

Some pages do not yet contain all of this information, but are nevertheless published in order to allow others to enrich them with further information. If the pages were hidden until they were complete, then people would not find them and they would remain incomplete indefinitely.

Rules and Blocking Policy

Please refrain from all of the following activity, which will result your user ID and/or IP address being blocked. Every wiki is required to have such a policy, and all users, including admins, must adhere to this policy.

1. Vandalism
2. Rudeness to other users
3. Disrupting good content
4. Reverting another user's edit without challenging all reasons given by the user for the edit. A reason given in the edit description should be challenged in the reversion's edit description. The latest reason given on a talk page should be challenged immediately below the reason on the same talk page. If a reasoned edit is reverted without a reason, then the user shall be entitled to undo the unreasoned reversion.
5. Deleting country pages of UN member states or territories without evidenced prior consensus to do so.
6. Inserting one-sided political statements about ongoing or past conflicts between countries or territories. This wiki is does not take sides and is not a forum to show which side are you on. It stays focused on mobile telephony. Therefore it's strictly committed to a neutral wording in these conflicting cases and any derogative names or disparagement lead to bans.
7. Deleting major parts of an article concerning basics or providers and their offers as long as they are still sold on the market. The only legitimate reasons to delete such a section are closure or merger of the mentioned provider or any repositioning of the provider so that the Basic Objectives mentioned above can't be met anymore (e.g. by selling postpaid only). Deleting outdated offers without updating or adding new offers, that are sold instead.
8. Unilaterally changing policies without either evidenced prior consensus or adopting a consensus-driven policy from another travel-related wiki