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Ask Slashdot: SIM-Card Solutions In North America?
An anonymous reader writes I'll be returning to North America for July for the first time in a few years, and I'm curious how the phone carrier market compares with the rest of the world. My last time in the U.S., I had to pick up a disposable phone with all kinds of unnecessary environmental waste (charger, packaging, etc.), and *still* had to register it with another domestic (!) phone number and credit card. I don't think I could get a SIM card there without a contract. Anywhere else I travel, picking up a new SIM card with pre-loaded credit is trivially easy. In my last trip to the UK, I just put GBP 10 into a vending machine at the airport and picked up a loaded SIM card for my phone which aldready has my contacts and settings. No ID, no name, no hassle. What are the best options for me in North America (U.S. *and* Canada)?
T-Mobile has a pay-as-you go SIM. I think AT&T does, too.
T-Mobile's is cheaper, but they have coverage issues (may not be a problem, depending on where you go).
See also this story.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
You can pay cash for a SIM at just about any big box vendor.
But US phones are mostly frequency locked to carriers.
If you are lucky (or are willing to settle for edge data rates) you can likely find a network that your phone works on. That will lead you to a group of pre-paid SIM vendors.
It starts with which network your phone will work on and how well. Do your research.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I have seen displays selling SIM cards and cheap cell phones in several grocery stores in my area (Arlington, VA). However, I haven't tried any of them.
When I got my GSM smartphone for use in the U.S. and elsewhere around the world, I got a SIM card from H2O Wireless at https://www.h2owirelessnow.com/mainControl.php?page=index . I've used that SIM card for over a year now with no contract and no problems. You could probably order a SIM card from them before you leave for the states and thus have it with you when you land.
go to any gas station in the ghetto and buy all the sim you want.
lose != loose
For the most reasonable rates I'd go with Straight Talk (WalMart) for GSM or Ting for CDMA service. Not sure if you can get away with not giving a name, but neither need any form of contract. I would skip the airport Kiosk and go right to a WalMart of Target for the pre-paid cards.
BestBuy sells H2O wireless SIMs that do not come with phones. The card says use with any unlocked GSM phone.
ATT T-Mobile and resellers (at 7-11,etc) all offer SIM cards without contract.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Unless it's changed recently, MyGoPhone SIM cards are not free. AT&T will doing you for $10 to get one.
There are a bunch of companies selling SIM cards online (e.g. Telestial), both for the US and for global roaming; just search on Google. I've found that kind of mail-order to be the best source for SIM cards for travel.
Walmart, some electronics retailers, and some drugstores also sell cheap prepaid SIM cards that are easy to activate.
Since only half of US carriers use GSM, your choices are a bit limited. Also, most Americans apparently prefer subsidized phones and subscription plans, since the prepaid BYOP plans are just not that popular.
Instead of asking Slashdot such a silly question you could also just google getting a gsm sim card in the us.
Lo and behold!
#1) "The best Prepaid SIM Cards"
#2) "SIM Cards - Best Buy"
It's been trivial to do this for about a decade and 5 seconds of googling got me the answer. This is one of the stupidest ask slashdots ever, and they are almost all incredibly stupid. I'm not looking and I'm going to guess tImothy put this story up.
checks the top of the page
Yup. Fuck timothy.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
> Even Africa one gets better and easier SIM offerings than USA
Some parts of it yes, Kenya was just like here in the UK. In Ethiopia I had to go to a government office with my passport, fill in a form, and provide a passport photo for them to keep just for a pay as you go sim. Although you could buy them unofficially off the street too.
You have a 4 band GSM phone, right?
I had to pick up a disposable phone
This would be the case if your GSM phone only supported the two EU bands. Or if you mistakenly walked into a shop that handled non-GSM carriers (Verizon).
Have a 4 band phone and go to an AT&T or T-Mobile shop (or reseller) and pick up a prepaid SIM. No problem. Your phone isn't carrier locked, as you can swap SIMs in the EU. Using that phone here will not be a problem here. Carrier locks are used if you buy a phone on contract (to keep you from skippig out on paying the phone subsidy). But if you own it outright, the carriers don't care.
Have gnu, will travel.
My aunt is a drug dealer, you insensitive clod!
OP is a tourist, and there's a big difference between a tourist and a terrorist.
Go to Best Buy, get a sim card for $10. Go online, activate. Minutes are in $10 increments good for 90 days, 5c a minute for talk and text
It's a problem since you need to find a vendor that carries those.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Get an unlocked phone that has a sim socket.. Buy prepay sim cards off the shelf.. at anything from a drugstore, grocery to a kiosk at the mall. I have even seen them at gas stations lately..
All done. ( for the US anyway, i assume Canada has stores that sell them too )
And if you want to be really fancy, get one of those multi-band dual socket china phones. ( i have one, it can do both at&T/t-mobile style GSM and Verizon CDMA.... *at the same time* even... )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
There's a vending machine next to a data center there, put in USD$10 or BTC equivelant for your very own SIM card no questions asked. Just ignore the pinprick when you go to pull out the card. The card you get will be NSA certified to be Unmonitored(tm).
The UK system of vending machines in the airport is extremely convenient (and the vending machines typically support a bunch of languages and different network sims too), i wish other countries did something similar...
You can buy prepaid sims in most countries but often not in the airport, and quite often the pricing will only be displayed in the local language etc so it can be hard to work out what you're actually getting for your money (and quite easy to get ripped off in the small phone shops).
I just want a cheap prepaid sim that the people i'm visiting can call me on, and with a decent data allowance so i can use google maps etc. It would also be extremely convenient if you could buy them before you travel and have them shipped to you.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
I don't know why you had such a problem. There are many GSM carriers that offer SIM/pre-pay, and have for as long as I can recall.
Agreed. He doesn't say exactly when his last trip to the US was, but AT&T and T-Mobile had prepaid SIMs "a few years ago". I don't know if there are any airport shops that sell them (seems like there would be), but as you say, they're readily available in various stores outside the airport.
However, AT&T's prepaid plans suck for tourists... if you have a smartphone (and seeing that this is /., I bet OP does), AT&T will make you get a "smartphone" plan, which starts at $25 for a month of service, and doesn't actually include any data--that's an extra $5 for a measly 50MB. T-Mobile has prepaid plans that I think would work better for a short-term visitor, e.g., perhaps their $3/day unlimited plan.
But I think the best prepaid plans in the US for visitors come from "MVNO"s--basically companies that resell access to either AT&T's or T-Mobile's network, such as Airvoice or Ultra. Unfortunately, their SIMs tend not to be available in actual physical stores, which makes buying their service impractical for a visitor.
My carrier '3' has a deal where calls & texts in the US come out of my UK 10GBP/Month deal.
That's right, no roaming.....
I was over there last month and it seems that you have to use the 'T-Mobile' network. This is fine in the Cities but in many areas there was only AT&T or no signal at all. I was in the Rockies so this might not be the case for other parts on the US.
This has to be the way forward for all networks. Now if only I could get rid of roaming charges in India and other countries that I visit on a regular basis
I'd rather be riding my '63 Triumph T120.
If you have network connection on most of the places you go and you have a smartphone, you could just use VoIP. I use http://www.poivy.com/en/index.... whenever I am not in Belgium and it works great for me.
There are many more out there. I do not need an incoming number, but there will be VoIP providers who have that as well.
Prices will vary depending on the country you come from. Using your own server at home might also be an option.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Get Freephoneline. Pick up a sim with Data.
I have used Straight Talk for years. They sell BYOP activation kits. It comes with 4 sim card and a CDMA activation code. micro/nano AT&T, micro/nano T-Mobile. I use AT&T Straight Talk.
With the Nexus 5 you take the micro AT&T, and you get unlimited talk, text and data (up to 3GB on 4G, the rest on a throttle) for 45/mo. Its also got LTE as well as HSPA+/HSDPA.
There is a 60/mo plan that allows SMS and calls to international numbers if you need it.
I prepay a year at a time and get this for $495 for 12 months.
I use a rental SIM when traveling to Japan from here ( http://jcrcorp.com/mobile/mobi... ) . Europe I've used Swisscom prepaid.
Anyways, the Nexus 5 D820 seems to go everywhere and work.
Legalize the constitution. Think for yourself question authority.
if you have a smartphone (and seeing that this is /., I bet OP does), AT&T will make you get a "smartphone" plan,
How do thy do that? What's a their definition of a "smartpone" and how do they detect it?
Watch this Heartland Institute video
If you're planning ahead, some vendors on Amazon sell sim cards, including Net10 sim cards, international sim cards, and others. I believe that if you have an Amazon account anywhere, your login works in Amazon for any other country (My only experience is having an account in USA and buying stuff on Amazon.de). If you have the card before you leave, that is simplest and provides the most functionality. Then, if you want to shop for a sim card with a better rate, your phone will be working while you do so. Or, an airtime vendor like wirelessrefill.com might be able to sell you airtime at a better rate for the first card.
I bought an AT&T micro-SIM for my Samsung Galaxy S3 for $40 in May this year. That came with 500MB of data, there are other plans as well. If I'd loaded it up with enough there was some advantage if I was planning on spending more time in the USA within the year.
I simply walked into an AT&T store in Hollywood, asked, and got great service.
The only issue was when in some small towns that only had service from some other provider (I think it was Page AZ which only had CellularOne).
"go read a wiki page."
A relevant example of which would be...?
I have never once seem SIMs for sale in person anywhere in the US. This of course is not necessarily a representative of all locations, but it shoudl at least explain why some people find this to be a difficult question to answer and why they would appreciate someone who could answer it.
I was naif, in the Ivory Coast I went to the Orange HQ. They looked at me like I was an idiot and told me to buy it off an itinerant street vendor.
His eyes lit up when I told him I wanted to buy the 1 month internet prepaid plan - ($30 if I remember right).
Watch this Heartland Institute video
"go read a wiki page."
A relevant example of which would be...?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F... :)
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
Try the 7-11 "Speak Out" sim card. The sim card is $10 and can be used in most modern phones. Then you buy minute cards. The best part is instead of the minutes only being active for one month, they are good for a whole year. So, buy a $25 card and you have an emergency phone that has minutes for a year.
Via the IMEI database, which is the "serial number" of the phone, and is unique per phone.
My ex-roomate sent her phone in for warranty repair, and removed what she THOUGHT was the microSD card full of nude selfies.
When she got the new phone, she asked me for help because all the pictures were gone from the microSD
It turned out she had kept the (completely useless) sim card, and left the microSD card in the phone for everyone at the Verizon warehouse to look though.
Currently doing a trip in the middle of the country, and coverage of T-Mobile is very bad in at least WY,CO and NM. I see At&t and some unknown local carrier, but no T-mobile on any rural GSM mast I drive by. Waste of money unless you stay in a city. There it works nicely.
To be cheap and cheerful in the US you need an MVNO that works on the GSM networks here: ATT or T-Mo. dslreports.com is another good resource for user feedback in the forums about the services. I have lycamobile, which would be expensive if you're a heavy data user. It uses T-Mo, which is fine where I am (Los Angeles), but coverage can be spotty. Don't know anything about Canada.
T-Mobile service offers good prices, but there are a couple of catches to watch out for.
1. If you have a non-US phone that does not offer AWS band (1700 and 2100 MHz) coverage, you will not be able to get 3G data service in smaller cities (the ones that do not yet have LTE service). T-Mobile originally operated HSPA+ on that band; more recently they moved it to 1900 MHz (reducing or eliminating EDGE service to make room) and operate LTE on the AWS frequencies.
2. Most retail outlets only have the full size SIMs. If you need a micro or nano SIM you will probably have to order it from T-Mobile. You might be able to get one at a T-Mobile company store. Other places that sell prepaid T-Mobile stuff (drug stores, Best Buy, Radio Shack) won't have them. One other way to get a micro SIM is to buy a Lumia 521, an inexpensive Windows 8 phone.
General comments that apply to bringing any GSM phone to any US carrier: you need a quad-band phone (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz) phone to get anywhere at all. LTE probably won't work with your non-US phone.
In the UK most pay-as-you-go carriers will give you a free SIM, often with £5-£10 worth of credit, as a way to get to you locked to their network.
"You need to go to the employee and... ... ask!"
Ask? That's crazy talk!