Being my second trip to Barcelona for Mobile World Congress I have a bit of advice. If you or your company needs access to 3G or needs to make phone calls/sms, I suggest Yoigo. I got my Yoigo sim last year at a store called OpenCor. It is just a few hundred yards/meters from the entrance to MWC. If you walk out of the congress and make a right on Gran Via it’s about 2 blocks up. The address is Gran Via de les Corts 407-409 and it’s on the left side. You will need ID to purchase the sims, I used my US drivers license. One thing to note, MAKE SURE TO SET THE PREFERED LANGUAGE ON YOUR PHONE BEFORE YOU PUT IN THE YOIGO SIM. Otherwise it will switch it to Spanish, I learned the hard way.
Anyways, I got mine last year for 10Euro and it came with 10Euro on it already. I also added 10 more and was set for the entire week. The rates as of last year, to the best of my understanding are as follows
1.20Euro/day gives you unlimited 3G
.12Euro to all Spanish numbers
.30Euro for all international calls
.00 for Yoigo to Yoigo calls
.10 SMS to anywhere including Spain
.30 MMS to anywhere including Spain
This seems like a very good deal to me at least. Last year most of us had some call and 3G quality issues on the first day of MWC but after that it was fine. It seemed like they had to catch up to the influx of all the new subscribers.
I highly recommend Yoigo. If you have any questions don’t hesitate to ask.
UPDATE: OpenCor along with MANY other establishments in Spain are closed on Sundays. So don’t plan on picking up a sim or top up cards from them on Sunday.
Yoigo provides no internet settings for iPhone. They are:
APN – internet
username – yoigo
pwd – yoigo
Thanks for the tip!
Posted by Tero H. | February 16, 2009, 12:06 pmSadly I cannot get iPhone to work with Yoigo and turbo sim. Any ideas?
Posted by Bsrry | March 9, 2009, 6:08 am1,20 euro/day doesn’t give you 3G! it’s only 386 kbit/s.
fot 3G you need to buy special sim card for USB dongle, by contract
Posted by Dmitry | June 17, 2009, 8:58 amDoesn’t work for me. Jailbroke and unlocked iPhone 3G before I left Canada and bought Yoigo card when I arrived, but I get 5 dots – no bars – and no carrier connection. And I get an occasional “Invalid SIM” error. No idea why.
Posted by Rob | October 2, 2009, 1:51 amRob,
Sorry to hear the Yoigo sim is not working out for you.
Good luck,
Jeb
Posted by Jeb Brilliant | October 5, 2009, 1:52 amam mohammed sowe i live in spain provincia of the girona in santa coloma de farners post cord17430 but we dont have yoigo office in, snta coloma de ferners but i need it
Posted by mahamadou sowe | October 28, 2009, 6:33 amThank you for the tip. Gonna buy this card as soon as I touched Spanish ground
Cheers
Posted by SymbianWorld | January 7, 2010, 11:34 amoops.. im gonna land on a sunday. can any1 get the 10 euro deal for me? looks like a good deal.
Posted by Ani | February 7, 2010, 6:09 amgreat tip – by the way, the link to: http://www.elcorteingles.es/opencor/paginas/home.asp
is broken
Posted by jMac | February 7, 2010, 9:13 amI land on Sunday as well. My best suggestion is to try to find a phone shop in the airport and hope they have Yoigo sims for sale. I’ve never seen a phone shop in the airport but I haven’t really looked that hard. Good luck and be sure to ping me when you get in. My Yoigo # is +34-622-490059.
Posted by Jeb Brilliant | February 9, 2010, 12:17 amJonathan,
Thanks so much for reading my blog, what an honor. Are you coming to MWC?
Jeb
Posted by Jeb Brilliant | February 9, 2010, 12:19 am