US PAYG Sim Cards

Faith

Howdy folks,

I'm heading to California in the summer for the ol' J1, and I was wondering if it's worth my while getting a pay as you go sim card? I've heard that they're not good value, but to what extent?

Cheers!

Ruu_Old

For GSM phones there is T-Mobile and Cingular Wireless, not sure about the others. I think the T-mobile one is about $50 and you get a certain amount of minutes free but I find that I am going through minutes (credit) in no time and just got a landline in and call home using a calling card.

Willymuncher

The Cingular Wireless one starts at $15.

I've no idea if they are good value or not, I've been meaning to get one myself but haven't been arsed yet.

dave2pvd

Ruu wrote:

..........call home using a calling card.

:eek: Ruu, what about skype?

I got rid of the landline alltogether. Had no need for it.

GuanYin

most people have cells, noone really uses landlines that much.

Your best bet, if there are a group of you, is to get your phones unlocked and get a cingular sim. The sim is free when you buy credit. Texts home are 5 cent but you pay to receive them too. Cingular to cingular calling is free.

Downside, they charge you a dollar for every day you use the phone.

Ruu_Old

dave2pvd wrote:

:eek: Ruu, what about skype?

I got rid of the landline alltogether. Had no need for it.

Aye, I use googletalk from time to time. The only numbers I really call on the landline are the toll free ones I find, think they charge for those calls on my prepaid t-mobile though. I found no value in them at all, probably much better on bill pay but I'm not bothered to get one.

faceted

Ruu is right, pretty much all cell operators in the US charge for toll free numbers, that means if your using a calling card you're charged twice, once for the cell call and again by the card company (however, most public phones charge ridiculous amounts for this too, generally more!). If your calling within the US, they're handy to have and most operators offer free calls within their network, but some use a walkie-talkie system...which can be awkward! If you're there for only three months, the cost of a phone might not be worth it, if you have one unlocked...why not?

pow wow

I'm with Cingular out here, the sim was $25 with $25 on it so effectively free. US calls on my plan (there are 2 options) are 10c to non-cingular and free to cingular with a $1 a day usage charge for days you use it for calls (I text a lot so rarely pay the $1).

I have a calling card for home and Cingular charges 10c a minute to dial the 1800 number.

Solair

If you've a Tri or Quadband phone you can use a Cingular or T-Mobile SIM. Just bare in mind that T-Mobile's coverage isn't great outside major urban centres. It's worth looking at the coverage maps before deciding which network to go with.

AT&T Wireless/Cingular and T-Mobile (and a few other smaller cariers) use GSM (just at a slightly different frequency than normal European GSM).
Also, if you wander into Canada you can use Rodgers GSM

Verizon, Nextel and Virgin Mobile US use CDMA which is not compatable with GSM so you'd need to purchase a handset if you want to use their services.

Bare in mind that rollout of digital mobile service in the US was a little delayed due to various wranglings with the FCC and a number of other factors. So, there are still areas which may have much poorer coverage than you might expect. It's no where near as universally covered as the EU. Many places had coverage equivilant to the early days of Meteor in Ireland.
So, basically, if you're travelling outside an urban area just be aware that you can quite possibly go out of coverage for long periods of time so it's always worth having a prepaid phone card or something that you can use on a payphone.

As for physically using your mobile in the US:
Check the power adaptor can accept 120V 60Hz (Standard North American power)
Many phones come with universal power supplies that can accept any voltage from 100 to 240V.

If it does, it's simply a matter of using a simple pin adaptor to connect it to a socket in the states.

If it doesn't, you can just buy an adaptor in any mobile phone shop over there. Most common handset brands have the exact same/similar models and identical power connectors.

If your mobile's 3G, make sure that it's switched to 2G mode when you're in the US. 3G networks are very limited over there (again due to wrangling with the FCC and issues about frequency allocations. It's been badly delayed)

Couple of other points worth noting:

Prepay didn't really enter into the minds of mobile companies in the US until a couple of years ago, so the products tend not to be quite as sophisticated or developed as some of their European counterparts just yet. Make sure that whichever provider you pick, that you can top up easily. I found T-Mobile vouchers extremely hard to comeby when I was travelling around and also at the time T-mobile wouldn't do credit card topups!!!
You won't have online banking topups, ATM topups, etc etc that are available over here.

Also, it's worth noting that your mobile phone no will be issued within whatever areacode you buy the SIM card. There's no mobile prefix like there is in European countries i.e. your phone will be given a normal local number.

The downside to this is that you usually pay for incomming calls, rather than the caller paying a higher rate to call a mobile.
The charges on prepay are typically higher than on contract phones (same as Europe)

T-Mobile's SMS rates to Europe a year or so ago were pretty good. The SMSs I sent to Ireland were charged at normal national rates!

dave2pvd

Unfortunately T-Mobile got wise re international SMS. 11c ea now I believe.

Faith

Cheers Solair, that's great!

Our man in Havana

Don't bother bringing a phone with you. Go into Walmart and pick up a Tmobile prepaid phone for $30 comes with $10 credit. You then have to activate it, you can choose any area code you like in the US for your phone. Then your set to go. Tmobile have roaming agreements with other GSM providers to give better coverage and they also work in Canada.