Travelling to the USA - prepaid plans?

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Tomy255

28 posts

Geek

#154533 30-Oct-2014 23:25

Hi guys,

Me and my girlfriend are travelling to California next month and I was wondering how we would go about getting on a prepaid plan over there. We both use iPhones (4 and 5). I came across this website and it seems T-Mobile offer a prepaid sim card where you can get 1 GB of data that lasts 7 days. Has anyone done this before? I don't fancy paying roaming charges and last time we went our GPS crapped itself and we were using small camera phones we bought from Wal Mart lol. Any help is appreciated, we will be there for 2 weeks.

Heres the link
http://www.prepaidphonenews.com/2011/03/us-prepaid-gsm-voice-text-and-data.html

tardtasticx

3027 posts

Uber Geek

#1165408 31-Oct-2014 00:11

I spoke to someone the other day from T-Mobile about my partner going to Hawaii in December. They said they have some plans that let you sign up without SSN and addresses in the US. They said to give 1800TMOBILE a call (can do from Skype) and arrange ordering a SIM and setting up the plan etc. Or you could do it when you land but just one less thing to worry about. They seem to have a lot of pay monthly plans and the agent said just pay for one month, use as much as you can during your trip and disconnect when you leave.

Definitely beats roaming charges.

Bachelor of Computing Systems (2015)

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sbiddle

29282 posts

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#1165421 31-Oct-2014 06:17

You can easily buy a prepaid SIM and put in on the $2 per day prepaid plan

My days of bothering with swapping SIMs is over though, Vodafone's $5 per day roaming really changes the whole game entirely and I see absolutely no reason to bother with a roaming SIM if I'm in a country where this is supported.

nickb800

2476 posts

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#1165452 31-Oct-2014 08:04

I was in CA in July, and visited a T-mobile store first thing after I landed. IIRC $10 for a SIM and $2 per day for 200mg of 4G data (then unlimited 2G speeds after that) with unlimited calling/messaging. The other option was $3 per day for unlimited 4G, calling, messaging.

The one thing to watch out for is that they don't have complete coverage of the USA, so if you go outside of their native coverage area, then you will roam onto another network (often AT&T) - just like 2degrees customers roaming onto Vodafone outside main centres. They don't offer any option for data roaming, so you won't have any data access outside of their coverage. Calls/messaging is still covered by the plan when you are outside their native area. IME San Fran and Seattle were sweet for T-Mobile coverage, but I roamed onto other networks while on the train up to Seattle and in Anchorage. The T-Mobile coverage maps only show the total coverage including roaming agreements, so it's hard to predict where you can get data

sbiddle

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#1165456 31-Oct-2014 08:08

The other thing to remember if you're wanting to use T-Mobile is that you need a handset that supports the correct bands, particularly 1900MHz for their 3G as they moved their 3G from their AWS band to this.

old3eyes

8476 posts

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Subscriber

#1165497 31-Oct-2014 08:59

sbiddle: You can easily buy a prepaid SIM and put in on the $2 per day prepaid plan

My days of bothering with swapping SIMs is over though, Vodafone's $5 per day roaming really changes the whole game entirely and I see absolutely no reason to bother with a roaming SIM if I'm in a country where this is supported.

But that's only on post pay?? Us plebs on prepay have to make do with what we can..

Regards,

Old3eyes

dickytim

2514 posts

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Inactive user

#1167234 3-Nov-2014 06:38

I used T-Mobile for my Ipad and AT&T for my Iphone, should have used T-Mobile for both.

If you go into AT&T they will refuse to sell you a sim card for your iphone!

T-Mobile were awesome to deal with and offered more for the money. The guy at the store even opened up a wireless hotspot to get a sim card for my Iphone4 as they had run out that day!

The coverage was great for T-Mobile in Anaheim, Honolulu and San Fransisco, can't comment on anywhere else as that is where we went!

You can order sim cards and get them delivered to your hotel but I found it easier, if not longer to go into store and they put is all together, loaded the credit and helped me set up.