Chatsim is a global SIM card which offers free access to popular messaging Apps when roaming on over 400 cellular networks worldwide. This includes Facebook, WhatsApp, Telegram etc. I believe the business model is that you still pay for cellular data consumed by other applications and they’ll expect those revenues to compensate for messaging services. Standard voice calls and text messages are blocked.
Disclaimer: I have not used this product and have no affiliation with that business.
I wondered if this might be useful to put into an iPad dedicated for flying purposes, with some restrictions on which Apps can access data to limit the costs (eg iOS version updates). If you did want access to data, then could tether to a cellular phone or use Wi-Fi.
Some may view the costs of roaming mobile data now tolerable enough not to bother with the hassle of yet another subscription, but this might be a useful add-on/alternative.
With Autorouter now supporting METAR/TAF via Telegram for example, that might be nice to have.
Their website is very short on facts (e.g. SIM expiry in low or highly intermittent use conditions – always the biggest catch with an PAYG SIM card) but this
shows that they want €25 for 250MB of data.
IMHO that is expensive, unless you really are a perpetual traveller.
Let me throw in an example of a UK based pilot who does one away trip per week, staying for 2 nights i.e. consuming some data in a foreign country on 3 days each week. Very few people do that; you would probably need to be single, de facto single, or have a very keen flying partner.
Let’s say you are on the Vodafone contract with the Euro Traveller. For about €15/month you get 1000MB/month plus “unlimited” voice and SMS to UK numbers. Note than an Ipad can’t do voice or SMS unless jailbroken. I get through 500-800MB/month of data on my phone and I am nowhere near a heavy data user… During each month he will incur the £3/day Euro Traveller charge 12 times i.e. £36/month or about €45/month.
Back to the travelling pilot. Say he uses 750MB/month of data. That will cost him €75/month. For him to find this SIM a better deal than the Voda contract (specifically, tethering his Ipad to his phone which has the Voda SIM in it) his data usage would need to be below something like 500MB/month. And if he travels less (i.e. incurs less of the £3 charges) then the figures look even worse.
So it comes down to where the data gets used, and the convenience of having a tablet which has internet without having to tether it to a phone.
As I said above, I would check the policy on termination if the usage is low or zero. I have a really nice Lenovo X230 laptop which has a Vodafone PAYG SIM in it, which at something like £1/25MB UK or £2/25MB abroad (I cannot keep track of the ever changing pricing) is a useful option, but I have to remember to “exercise” this SIM every 90 days or less, otherwise the greedy buggers kill it.
If they never cut off the SIM, and you avoid using the tablet for normal data (hard to do, IMHO, because emails can be pretty big) then this could be a great deal.
The other gotcha is which network this runs on the back of. It could be some useless one which doesn’t actually work most of the time.
Another gotcha is whether data sent over the messaging services is counted. Images sent via Whatsapp or Telegram are downsized to about 100k bytes but you can still get through a lot of data that way.
