When you visit South Africa as a tourist you might want to use your mobile phone but it could become very expensive very quickly if you are roaming with your foreign SIM card.
Instead of roaming, I would recommend buying one of the local SIM cards and getting a couple of add-ons such as an internet bundle and calls abroad to keep in touch with your family.
My Recommendation: Get An MTN Sim Card
I picked the MTN network as that is what everybody recommended before I travelled to South Africa. MTN has a great coverage across South Africa and they offer some tourist friendly packages.
They have a desk at the airport so it is very handy for when you arrive at Johannesburg.
Finding The MTN Shop At Johannesburg Airport
As you walk out of the arrivals gate, turn right and you will see a big yellow store front – that will be the MTN mobile phone store that sells SIM cards to unlocked foreign cell phones.
They have various packages starting 500 Mb going all the way up to 80GB. If you want talk time then you can pick packages starting at 100 Rand and so on. There is also a registration cost and the cost of the SIM card.
Related: Read My Full, One Week South African Road Trip Itinerary Here
I picked 3GB data and added 100 Rand talk time. This cost me 493 Rand which in retrospect was quite a lot especially that I hardly spent any of my allowance in the week I spent there. I would say if you arrive put 50 rand on the phone and get maybe 1GB data.
My MTN Data Usage
I paste below a screen shot of the MTN app that helped me keep track of my spending: it shows I hardly even spent any of the data even though I was listening to youtube while driving and using Google Maps, Booking.com, checking my mail and Instagram, Facebook so on and so forth. Anyhow, if you have any questions, feel free to ask them in the comment section below.
