Mobile phone cards in Malaysia

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Alfred Molon - 04 Jul 2009 13:47 GMT

FYI, in Malaysia with local prepaid cards for mobile phones (GSM or UMTS
standard) it is possible to make very cheap international calls.

With the Maxis prepaid card I used, phone calls to Europe cost less than
RM 0.30/minute (= less than 6 Euro cents/minute), i.e. essentially
peanuts. Was very surprised after I checked the card balance after a 7
minutes international call.

This was the case with the Maxis prepaid card, but it's quite likely
that the other operators in Malaysia (Celcom, Digi, TMTouch) also apply
similar prices for international calls.

Mobile data services were available with the Maxis prepaid card, i.e.
you can for instance use the mobile phone as an Internet modem for a
notebook. At 1 cent of a RM per KB pricing was however ridiculously
high. 1 MB of data costs RM 10 = 2 Euro.

I used the mobile data services a few times to check my email with the
Magic Mail Monitor software, which allows you to check the mailserver
content without having to download the emails, when there was no
Internet cafe nearby or I just quickly wanted to check the emails in the
hotel late in the evening without losing time walking to an Internet
cafe etc.

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Alfred Molon
http://www.molon.de - Photos of Asia, Africa and Europe

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Sharkbait - 04 Jul 2009 16:35 GMT

Alfred Molon wrote;

> FYI, in Malaysia with local prepaid cards for mobile phones (GSM or UMTS
> standard) it is possible to make very cheap international calls.

This is good to know for our upcoming trip. What venues sell these Maxis
prepaid cards? Thanks in advance?

rg

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Alfred Molon - 05 Jul 2009 06:45 GMT

> This is good to know for our upcoming trip. What venues sell these Maxis
> prepaid cards? Thanks in advance?

They are sold at almost every corner. Well no, not really, but
everywhere in Malaysia, even in the smallest cities, there are shops
selling mobile phones and mobile phone cards. The simplest thing is to
head to the nearest shopping mall.

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Alfred Molon
http://www.molon.de - Photos of Asia, Africa and Europe

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Alfred Molon - 05 Jul 2009 07:01 GMT

> This is good to know for our upcoming trip. What venues sell these Maxis
> prepaid cards? Thanks in advance?

By the way, I found this:
http://www.lonelyplanet.com/thorntree/message.jspa?messageID=11806772

"From celcom ... Call costs to Australia - using their budget service -
were an unbelievable 25sen to a fixed line (about 10c AUD) a minute."

So apparently also Celcom prepaid cars offer these cheap international
rates. Perhaps also DiGi cards have these rates.

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Alfred Molon
http://www.molon.de - Photos of Asia, Africa and Europe

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Chris Blunt - 04 Jul 2009 17:24 GMT

>FYI, in Malaysia with local prepaid cards for mobile phones (GSM or UMTS
>standard) it is possible to make very cheap international calls.
[quoted text clipped - 12 lines]
>notebook. At 1 cent of a RM per KB pricing was however ridiculously
>high. 1 MB of data costs RM 10 = 2 Euro.

Its interesting how the different mobile operators in Asia charge
widely differing rates for the same services

Here in the Philippines mobile internet is relatively cheap. Each 15
minutes of connection time costs 5 Pesos regardless of how much data
you use. So that 2 Euros you paid in Malaysia would get you almost 7
hours of connection time here.

On the other hand, international calls are more expensive, and charged
at 20 Pesos a minute. That works out much more expensive than Malaysia
at around 30 Euro cents/minute.

Chris

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Travel Forum / Destinations / Asia / July 2009

Mobile phone cards in Malaysia