May 13, 2011 at 01:20Personal experience. Cyprus. Mobile phone, internet, wifi and other geek joys
I recently visited Cyprus, I will share my experience.
I didn’t want to interrupt communication with my homeland, I wanted navigation for independent travel, and I had to keep an eye on businesses.
So, I report.
First, do not use any roaming. Get ready in advance.
Your Voice SIM card must be redirected to one of the forwarding services exactly before departure. Of the simpler ways, cheaper than magic.mtt.ru is difficult to find - forwarding calls to Europe to mobile at 3.99 r per minute, Moscow number in 499 code 300 r per month. There is a difficult way, for example, from crossing a megaphone multi-phone, pbxes.com and rynga.com, read, for example, here
If you want to play it safe, you can buy a simtravel SIM card in Moscow’s seventh continent for 350 rubles with 10 ye on your balance sheet, but you only need to call your relatives from the plane on the way to the airport that flew by. Well, or catch a call until you buy a local SIM.
The second one.
We leave, we buy at the airport a sim card of one of the local operators. There are so far two
prips : Cyta Soeasy It costs 15 euros, 5 euros on the balance sheet.
And MTN Payasyougo costs 12.5 euros, 5 euros on the balance sheet.
On both - all incoming calls are free, calls to Moscow, St. Petersburg and to all Russian mobile 12.47 euro cents - less than 5 rubles! .. Top-up cards to both operators are sold at every corner, and at face value. It is not difficult to replenish them through the Internet with a credit card.
The difference is MTN is younger than Cyta, the coverage in the mountains is slightly worse, but all settlements are covered by both operators.
And yet, CytaSoeasy has no Internet, you need to buy a separate SIM card for it, which is nowhere to be sold, MTN Payasyougo has Internet access, it’s so easy to 0.99 euros per megabyte, BUT there are packages. In short - if we need 80 megabytes per week - an sms helmet at number 6040 with the text data on week. For a week I spent less than 60 megabytes on the LG optimus One, without limiting myself to anything. So, bought, inserted into the phone. Set up a call forwarding service to a Cyprus number - at the airport there is free wifi for this. If you need to receive SMS to the old number, insert the old SIM card into a previously prepared handset for 500 rubles and read on it once a day.
Thirdly, we solved the problem with telephone communications, we are going to a hotel. The Internet there is usually only in the lobby - ask for the network key at the reception. This is enough for someone, but someone needs to get out of the netbook more often and from the room, from the catering points in the city. Hotel rooms usually do not finish off the rooms, and some citycell and redwifi are caught from the window. We try.
redwifithere are many points, registration online, payment by credit card, costs 20 euros per week. Worked for me more or less stably. A couple of times a week fell off.
citycell Points are even more, it costs 25 euros per week, but there was no online registration, and I was lazy to call. The reviews work well.
Yes, some cafes have free wifi, some paid, in the same Starbucks. McDonald's did not disappoint, free wifi was also found in it.
Fourth - Money. The Republic of Cyprus is full of Russian banks. Personally, I removed from the ATM of the Cypriot branch of Promsvyazbank (at a reduced rate without a commission), I saw another VTB daughter - I did not check it. There are, like wm exchangers. Well, Unistream.
Fifth - Navigation is not in Yandex maps, nor does it work in Google maps. Google gives out street names in Greek, there are no streets in Yandex at all, so you'll take a car, preferably with a local navigator. By the way, it’s better to rent a car in a large company and over the Internet. It is sad without a car in Cyprus; public transport is not very developed here. With a right-hand drive car is a completely different matter, especially if there is anyone to drive. Hint - a glass of wine in front of the wheel is allowed.
UPD: Advise IGO. I'll try to pick it up.
Sixth - Firms. To open a company and combine business with pleasure is simple and inexpensive. Opening a company on the spot - 475 euros + 200 euros to a nominee director, for example, in Russia, the Cypriot offshore will be sold to you for 1,500 euros. An account in a Cypriot bank, with a personal presence, will be opened for free. In Russia, this is another 200-300 euros. Despite the fact that a weekly single trip in the off-season costs 250 euros, they give a visa without problems, it takes only 4 hours to fly. Alas, the Cypriot offshore is subject to 15% VAT on residents of the European Union + 10% on profits, must annually submit reports. But two directors of an international company and their families can (with money and hemorrhoids) be granted a residence permit - and I really want to stay there.
UPD: I was reminded that there is free wifi on the promenade, plus CYTA distributed a bunch of routers with WEP encryption and a default password calculated at a time to the population.
I didn’t want to interrupt communication with my homeland, I wanted navigation for independent travel, and I had to keep an eye on businesses.
So, I report.
First, do not use any roaming. Get ready in advance.
Your Voice SIM card must be redirected to one of the forwarding services exactly before departure. Of the simpler ways, cheaper than magic.mtt.ru is difficult to find - forwarding calls to Europe to mobile at 3.99 r per minute, Moscow number in 499 code 300 r per month. There is a difficult way, for example, from crossing a megaphone multi-phone, pbxes.com and rynga.com, read, for example, here
If you want to play it safe, you can buy a simtravel SIM card in Moscow’s seventh continent for 350 rubles with 10 ye on your balance sheet, but you only need to call your relatives from the plane on the way to the airport that flew by. Well, or catch a call until you buy a local SIM.
The second one.
We leave, we buy at the airport a sim card of one of the local operators. There are so far two
prips : Cyta Soeasy It costs 15 euros, 5 euros on the balance sheet.
And MTN Payasyougo costs 12.5 euros, 5 euros on the balance sheet.
On both - all incoming calls are free, calls to Moscow, St. Petersburg and to all Russian mobile 12.47 euro cents - less than 5 rubles! .. Top-up cards to both operators are sold at every corner, and at face value. It is not difficult to replenish them through the Internet with a credit card.
The difference is MTN is younger than Cyta, the coverage in the mountains is slightly worse, but all settlements are covered by both operators.
And yet, CytaSoeasy has no Internet, you need to buy a separate SIM card for it, which is nowhere to be sold, MTN Payasyougo has Internet access, it’s so easy to 0.99 euros per megabyte, BUT there are packages. In short - if we need 80 megabytes per week - an sms helmet at number 6040 with the text data on week. For a week I spent less than 60 megabytes on the LG optimus One, without limiting myself to anything. So, bought, inserted into the phone. Set up a call forwarding service to a Cyprus number - at the airport there is free wifi for this. If you need to receive SMS to the old number, insert the old SIM card into a previously prepared handset for 500 rubles and read on it once a day.
Thirdly, we solved the problem with telephone communications, we are going to a hotel. The Internet there is usually only in the lobby - ask for the network key at the reception. This is enough for someone, but someone needs to get out of the netbook more often and from the room, from the catering points in the city. Hotel rooms usually do not finish off the rooms, and some citycell and redwifi are caught from the window. We try.
redwifithere are many points, registration online, payment by credit card, costs 20 euros per week. Worked for me more or less stably. A couple of times a week fell off.
citycell Points are even more, it costs 25 euros per week, but there was no online registration, and I was lazy to call. The reviews work well.
Yes, some cafes have free wifi, some paid, in the same Starbucks. McDonald's did not disappoint, free wifi was also found in it.
Fourth - Money. The Republic of Cyprus is full of Russian banks. Personally, I removed from the ATM of the Cypriot branch of Promsvyazbank (at a reduced rate without a commission), I saw another VTB daughter - I did not check it. There are, like wm exchangers. Well, Unistream.
Fifth - Navigation is not in Yandex maps, nor does it work in Google maps. Google gives out street names in Greek, there are no streets in Yandex at all, so you'll take a car, preferably with a local navigator. By the way, it’s better to rent a car in a large company and over the Internet. It is sad without a car in Cyprus; public transport is not very developed here. With a right-hand drive car is a completely different matter, especially if there is anyone to drive. Hint - a glass of wine in front of the wheel is allowed.
UPD: Advise IGO. I'll try to pick it up.
Sixth - Firms. To open a company and combine business with pleasure is simple and inexpensive. Opening a company on the spot - 475 euros + 200 euros to a nominee director, for example, in Russia, the Cypriot offshore will be sold to you for 1,500 euros. An account in a Cypriot bank, with a personal presence, will be opened for free. In Russia, this is another 200-300 euros. Despite the fact that a weekly single trip in the off-season costs 250 euros, they give a visa without problems, it takes only 4 hours to fly. Alas, the Cypriot offshore is subject to 15% VAT on residents of the European Union + 10% on profits, must annually submit reports. But two directors of an international company and their families can (with money and hemorrhoids) be granted a residence permit - and I really want to stay there.
UPD: I was reminded that there is free wifi on the promenade, plus CYTA distributed a bunch of routers with WEP encryption and a default password calculated at a time to the population.