"Setting up Your Phone in Tunis" by Emma

I, like many others, use my phone for navigation, calling taxis, asking questions, or getting help from friends, Google searches, translation, etc., etc., etc. Call me tech-savvy or maybe a little tech-dependent, getting my phone set up when I arrived in Tunis was one of the things that made me feel most comfortable and ready to explore. Here’s my mini guide on how I got my phone up and running in Tunis!

When you arrive in Tunisia, Amideast provides you with an emergency phone with a Tunisian SIM card inside. The emergency phone itself is a brick phone, which is super convenient as far as battery life, but you can also choose to remove the SIM card and put it in your personal phone if you have one, which is what I decided on. This will only work for you if your phone is unlocked for international usage, which was a little complicated to figure out at first, but there are a few useful guides with more information online on how to verify with your carrier that your phone is unlocked.

The next step is getting credit, which in Tunis is referred to as solde. To add or refill credit, you can go to any corner store (hammas) or grocery store (attar) to buy a refill card, which you can normally find in either 1dt, 5dt, or 10dt. The main providers in Tunisia are Orange, Ooredoo, or Tunisie Telecom, and you can find credit for whichever your phone is set up with. Generally, you can ask for either “Tiquet” which refers to a 1dt credit, or “Khamsa” (5) or “Aachra” (10) to get a 5 or 10dt card and indicate whichever provider you need credit for. After, to add it to your plan, there are instructions on each card showing what to dial. All three providers also have mobile apps, and you can add credit directly from there if you have the SIM in a smartphone!

That will give you the ability to call or text, but it’s also important to add an internet plan if you have a smartphone and want to access things like Bolt (a taxi service similar to Uber), Google Maps, WhatsApp, or anything else that requires internet/data. To do so, you have to navigate either the app to choose a plan, dial to add an internet option, which will differ depending on the provider, or do it on their website. This can be tough if you are not an Arabic or French speaker, because the app/website languages often don’t have an English option, so it could be helpful to have your program coordinator, or a friend help translate and so you can pick the best option for you! The plans are generally inexpensive in comparison to what you might be accustomed to with a US phone plan, and generally, you can get anything from 1GB of data/mo for around 4dt or 25GB of data/mo for around 20dt.

If you run into any problems, your program coordinator can help you navigate them. One that we personally ran into was that credit was disappearing off one of the accounts, and it turned out the last person to have had that number had an unpaid debt that the credit was being taken to pay. After our program coordinator called, we got it sorted out with no issue, and it’s been working fine since.

Next, you should be good to go! I refill my credit when it gets low and have had no problems with my phone coverage since I arrived. And of course, generally, I use WhatsApp or other internet-based messaging services to communicate with friends and family back home to avoid the cost of international calls/texts.

Emma is an Amideast EdAbroad program alum and a previous intern with EdAbroad in Tunis.