Using Your Cell Phone in the Azores

When traveling to the Azores Islands from the USA, Canada, or Europe, there are many advantages to using your cell phone on the islands or purchasing a phone for 20-1000 Euros depending on your phone style. If you have an UNLOCKED cell phone, when you arrive in the Azores, you can stop off at the airport or one of the locations for MEO, Vodafone, or Nos Acores to activate a local number very easy, and it only takes a few minutes. The above companies are the leading service providers in the Azores and have affordable plans for your European travel needs. 

At the airport on Sao Miguel island in Ponta Delgada, there are two small stores in the airport’s gift shop area where you can stop off and speak to a MEO or Vodafone agent about your needs. They can then sell you a sim card for 20 Euros that you can just put into your phone and get a local number. This way, you can take advantage of the regional plans they offer or only pay as you go for the duration of your trip. The staff is amicable and often speak English and German if Portuguese is not your native language. Everything is straightforward to set up, and you will have a local number to use in no time with all the information provided to you about your SIM Card purchase, local cell phone number, and the plan. The SIM card usually comes with 5 or 10 euros worth of minutes on it as a start, so it is recommended to add data or minutes depending on your needs. The data is quite affordable! I used Vodafone and paid 25 Euros for 15gb of data for 15 days. It is more than enough data at about a 1gb a day for two weeks.