Finding good solutions to have a phone number and decent internet when being in another country is a annoying task. For this reason, I wrote the following article: To help students who come to Germany.
General overview
In Germany, pre-paid sim cards are pretty good compared to contracts. Well-known providers of pre-paid cards are:
- Discounters
- Online
- blau.de (former "simyo")
- simquardat.de
Why I like Lidl Connect
I haven't used it for long, so take this with a grain of salt. But what I've seen so far is nice:
- A clean user interface
- Cheap "Festznetz-Flat" (8 Euro - much cheaper than the rest)
- Prepaid
- I pay the same in the other countries of the EU - no more "EU packages". Simply the same. No roaming. As far as I understand it. This is what finally got me. For my 10 day trip in Barcelona, I paied about 20 Euro to Blau. (Lidl source, other source)
How to get Lidl Connect card
- Go to a Lidl store. Near the check-out, there are small cardboard cards. When you paid for it, they will give you a similar small "box". This box contains the sim card (standard, micro and nano) as well as instructions (German only)
- Go to Lidl Connect and register a new account with the card you just bought.
- The card gets activated within 30 minutes.
- You can login at kundenkonto.lidl-connect.de
User Interface
The Lidl connect app seems to work fine. It shows the important information.
Switching from Blau.de to Lidl
As Simyo recently was changed into blau.de (E-Plus), I am a customer of Blau.de. However, the service is worse than the one of Lidl, so I switched.
edit: I've recently heard from Marvin that the service hotline of Blau.de asks for the first four characters of your password. So they store the password as plain text.
After getting your Lidl Connect card, you have to tell Blau that you want to keep the number (Rufnummernmitnahme). Fill out this form and send it to the address on the form. Your "SIM-Kartennummer" is printed on the sim card itself.
I sent it on 23.12.2016 to them. I'm still (02.01.2016) waiting for a response.
19.01.2016: Still waiting for a response. I tried to contact them, but the chat was not working. I tried to find a phone number, but there seems not to be any on the website. Only for new contracts. But at least that automatic number said that 0177 177 11 59 is customer service. More than 2 minutes until I reached them. Blau is so shitty. At least the person helped me. 5 minutes later I've got a SMS:
Lieber Blau Kunde, Ihre Freigabe der Rufnummer-Mitnahme zu einem anderen Anbieter (Portierungserklärung) für 016123456789 ist eingegangen und gültig bis 20.03.2017. Für die Rufnummer-Mitnahme wird eine Wechselgebühr entsprechend der aktuell gültigen Preisliste berechnet.
It's 25 Euro.
Update, 02.02.2017: The new Lidl Connect SIM card with my old number arrived. Seems not to be active at the moment.
Update, 06.02.2017: Finally, I have the Lidl SIM card with my new number 🙂