Mobile Phones in the USA

[PrincessInOz]

I wonder why we couldn't get one then I am not going to share that with DH he was annoyed with me as it was cause I should of ordered before we left oops

I don't know why either.

 

[Rebekkap]

Hi,
Just wondering what people do about Mobile usage in the USA.
I have looked a few sites thats offer sim cards to pre-purchase and there are few to choose from or do you wait until you arrive and purchase a sim there?

Just interested at what people have found to work the best for them.

I plan on taking my own phone and possibly my Ipad so data for that.

Interesed to hear what you all do.

If you want data, I have not found a better plan than Net10 - $50 for unlimited text, talk and data for a month - and at 4G speeds, which outdoes anything else! It's pre-paid and no automatic renewal so nothing to cancel when you leave. I've used it a couple of times now with no issues. I did have issues with a sim from travel gear before that (texts wouldn't work) and with simple (no actual problems but 2G data is soooo slow!)

You can buy the net10 sims on eBay.

 

[SIMTRAC]

Do the sims also work in Canada as well as USA. We are in both countries for Christmas and new year

 

[Andona]

This was posted recently on the Whirlpool Forums...things are always changing!

"Just arrived here in the US and have an AT&T GoPhone sim in my phone activated with 4G and 2GB of data.

Went off without a hitch. Things are completely different now, at least if you're going with AT&T. Here's my experience:

The GoPhone plans have now changed. Significantly. As of today (!).
It's both good and bad. The great thing is, no more creating and changing APNs, no more having to fight for data, or sneakily add on a data pack later. Walk in with your smartphone, walk out with a sim card with bundled data. The great thing about this is unlike with an AT&T APN, you can still use your phone as a hotspot.

Plan pricing:
There are now only 2 plans available for smartphones.
One is $40/month (pre-paid, so no contract, or obligation to pay for more than one month) and includes 500 minutes of talk, some number of text (might be unlimited?) and 200mb of data. Now, depending on what you're doing and where you're staying you're probably going to want more data – there is free wi-fi in a lot of places, but you can't walk around having internet constantly on just using free wifi.

So, there's a second plan – $60/ month (pre-paid, so no contract, or obligation to pay for more than one month) which includes unlimited talk and text incl. texts to 100 countries or whatever. 2GB of data at 4G speeds on my iPhone 4S.
Which is great. It's not quite $60 though, you still have to pay $15 for the micro sim. So, all up you're looking at about $75, which IS expensive, though the old method of $15 (sim) + $25 (plan) + $25 (data pack) is not all that much cheaper, and I walked out of the AT&T store today with calls and data working perfectly after about 15 minutes of setup. These new plans are in effect from today (20 June 13) so anyone looking for GoPhone plans for smartphones will have only those options available. They're so new, even the guys in the store weren't 100% sure whether or not they were going to work properly. As it turns out, it works great.

One thing to note, is that they didn't have much in the way of in-store collateral about the plans, except for one small tear-off flyer that detailed them in small font. On the $60 plan, it mentioned only 1GB of data. The AT&T rep assured me it would be 2GB, and if it wasn't I could call 611, yell at the customer service rep and get it fixed. All good, it turns out, a full 2GB on my account.

Currently in Orlando, 4G speeds are pretty good – certainly a lot faster than the '4G' I was using in LA last year. Whether that's a network upgrade or simply the difference in location, I don't know."

Andona

 

[PrincessInOz]

This was posted recently on the Whirlpool Forums...things are always changing!

"Just arrived here in the US and have an AT&T GoPhone sim in my phone activated with 4G and 2GB of data.

Went off without a hitch. Things are completely different now, at least if you're going with AT&T. Here's my experience:

The GoPhone plans have now changed. Significantly. As of today (!).
It's both good and bad. The great thing is, no more creating and changing APNs, no more having to fight for data, or sneakily add on a data pack later. Walk in with your smartphone, walk out with a sim card with bundled data. The great thing about this is unlike with an AT&T APN, you can still use your phone as a hotspot.

Plan pricing:
There are now only 2 plans available for smartphones.
One is $40/month (pre-paid, so no contract, or obligation to pay for more than one month) and includes 500 minutes of talk, some number of text (might be unlimited?) and 200mb of data. Now, depending on what you're doing and where you're staying you're probably going to want more data  there is free wi-fi in a lot of places, but you can't walk around having internet constantly on just using free wifi.

So, there's a second plan  $60/ month (pre-paid, so no contract, or obligation to pay for more than one month) which includes unlimited talk and text incl. texts to 100 countries or whatever. 2GB of data at 4G speeds on my iPhone 4S.
Which is great. It's not quite $60 though, you still have to pay $15 for the micro sim. So, all up you're looking at about $75, which IS expensive, though the old method of $15 (sim) + $25 (plan) + $25 (data pack) is not all that much cheaper, and I walked out of the AT&T store today with calls and data working perfectly after about 15 minutes of setup. These new plans are in effect from today (20 June 13) so anyone looking for GoPhone plans for smartphones will have only those options available. They're so new, even the guys in the store weren't 100% sure whether or not they were going to work properly. As it turns out, it works great.

One thing to note, is that they didn't have much in the way of in-store collateral about the plans, except for one small tear-off flyer that detailed them in small font. On the $60 plan, it mentioned only 1GB of data. The AT&T rep assured me it would be 2GB, and if it wasn't I could call 611, yell at the customer service rep and get it fixed. All good, it turns out, a full 2GB on my account.

Currently in Orlando, 4G speeds are pretty good  certainly a lot faster than the '4G' I was using in LA last year. Whether that's a network upgrade or simply the difference in location, I don't know."

Andona

Thanks Andona. I think that $60 plan might be what I'll get for my next trip. I was going to go with the $2 per day plan and will be there for close on 30 days; so it's a no brainer for me. And it seems that international text messages are included in the plan.

It'll be interesting to see if the microSIM is still free or not.

 

[curlysue17]

Thats ok