Forum Discussion
Struggling with smarty in istanbul
Any help with using my Smarty sim in Istanbul would be appreciated
Basically it won’t work, tried help desk, not much use which is hugely disappointing
7 Replies
Okay Nichola_1557371, Istanbul in Turkey is not one of the SMARTY Mobile inclusive EU roaming destinations.
This means you cannot use your UK plan allowances while roaming in Turkey.
Your options are limited to using a local (free) Wi-Fi network, unless you add some credit to your account for potential roaming charges, while in Turkey.
Nichola_1557371 You haven't given us much info here.
Frstly, did you change phone settings as per instructions?
Secondly, do you realise that you need credit to pay for all usage as you are not. roaming in the EU? (Prices for calls/texts/data are shown in Price Guide)
Thirdly, if you have dealt with the first and second points, have you tried manual network selection on the phone to see if any of the available networks is better?
I'm heading to Turkey in a couple of weeks so I need to get a handle on this.
I'm not great at phone technology so I will probably give some feedback at some point to help others but for now I will change my phone settings, I hope I can figure out how. Then I will buy some credit. Wish me luck....
Veronica833 Changing your phone settings so that APN is set to mob.asm.net is a must.
Bear in mind that any use while in Turkey will eat a fair bit of credit from top up. Take a look at the Price Guide - https://cdn.smarty.co.uk/files/SMARTY-Price-Guide.pdf?_gl=1*69t3e6*_ga*MjA5ODc3MzU1My4xNzI2MTM1Njc3*_ga_D8LNLN41LX*MTczNjA3NTk5OS40MTMuMS4xNzM2MDc2MDc0LjAuMC4w Calls are 50p per minute, texts are 20p and data is 10p per Mb - that means £102.40p for a Gigabyte !!!! A £10 top up could run out very quickly!
If you have a modern-ish phone, you may be able to use a Roaming Esim - these give data at a much more reasonable rate. Companies like Airalo and Holafly are popular - there are others.
Just returned from a trip to Turkey and Greece,
No problems in Greece but Turkey was a nightmare, cost me a load in "out of plan" add ons with next to no benefits, comment please ( I tried different network selections per your suggestion above - useless)
Whats your recommendation in future please ?
Nichola_1557371 Recommendation for the future would be to either purchase a local PAYG sim or else try an E-sim if your phone accepts them.
