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Ask Slashdot: Best Data Provider When Traveling In the US?
An anonymous reader writes: I am visiting USA 3-4 times a year and I need a data service. I also need to keep my cell phone number, so swapping the SIM card in my phone is not an option. I have bought those 19.95$ phones in Best-Buy to get a local number, but those were voice only. So I have been thinking about getting a MiFi hotspot.
I have been looking at pre-paid plans from Verizon(only 700 LTE band for their pre-paid hotspot), AT&T, T-Mobile etc. perhaps to put in a MiFi hotspot or buy a hotspot from a provider, but have no idea which one to use, their reputation, real life coverage etc. It is clear that all data plans in the USA are really expensive, I get 100GB monthly traffic with my Scandinavian provider for the same price as 6-8 GB monthly in the US, which I guess could be a problem with our Apple phones as they do not recognize a metered WiFi hotspot. But that is another issue. I travel all over but most of the time outside the big cities -- and my experience from roaming with my own phone and the cheap local phone so far tells me that coverage fluctuates wildly depending on the operator.
I have been looking at pre-paid plans from Verizon(only 700 LTE band for their pre-paid hotspot), AT&T, T-Mobile etc. perhaps to put in a MiFi hotspot or buy a hotspot from a provider, but have no idea which one to use, their reputation, real life coverage etc. It is clear that all data plans in the USA are really expensive, I get 100GB monthly traffic with my Scandinavian provider for the same price as 6-8 GB monthly in the US, which I guess could be a problem with our Apple phones as they do not recognize a metered WiFi hotspot. But that is another issue. I travel all over but most of the time outside the big cities -- and my experience from roaming with my own phone and the cheap local phone so far tells me that coverage fluctuates wildly depending on the operator.
When I visit the US, I use a Canadian provider known as Roam Mobility. They roam on T-Mobile's network, and the network seems to fall apart any time there are large crowds. Most of the time it worked OK, but when I went to Universal Studios or Anime Expo, I basically had no cell reception the entire time I was at either of those events/places.
My friends who were roaming on AT&T had no issues.
This isn't so useful as far as a phone goes, but for an MiFi device... but I recently purchased a Karma WiFi Hotspot. https://yourkarma.com/invite/b... (obligatory share link) or just https://yourkarma.com/ They work as a pay as you go vs a subscription basis. You buy 10GB of data, that data is good until you use it up. The data is still a little pricey ($100 for 10GB, $60 for 5GB) but they run promo deals from time to time. I'm a fan just because I hated having to spend $50/month on a data plan that I would often not use if I was out of the country for a chunk of time.
Part of Karma's thing is that the SSID will always be an open network with the name Karma in it (you can pick a couple options). If you are in a public place, others can log into your Karma and purchase internet time off of it. Any guest usage does not count against yours, and you get a data bonus for sharing your hotspot.
They say your connection is secured from any other device. I'm still not sure how they accomplish this.
Get a dual Sim phone. Then you can keep your number working and pick the cheapest provider for data. Most countries have reasonable tablet rates. You can get a cheap moto g or dual blu phone. I have a nice d6633 Sony xperia z3 dual Sim. I get 10 gigs of data per month pretty cheap.
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Verizon & AT&T will have the best average coverage throughout the US, especially the more rural areas. T-Mobile, Sprint and the various budget providers who piggyback on T-Mo & Sprint's networks work best in more urban areas, although there are always dead zones here and there too..
Compared to Europe, the US is still pretty empty, population wise, so a lot of rural areas just aren't worth investing in the network spectrum to cover unfortunately.
I do a lot of storm chasing on the Plains. I need good coverage to get weather data like radar images. In my experience, Verizon has by far the best coverage. They're expensive and I hate their new plans. I'm still grandfathered in on unlimited data, but the current batch of data plans are awful. That said, if you're concerned with having a signal outside of cities, I think Verizon is your best bet, at least for the central US. I can't speak for other parts of the country.
Wind sells a better roaming US data service to Canadians than Americans can get. It will give you unlimited data everywhere via AT&T and T-Mobile. There is a slow-down cap of around 3GB or so.
Port you US number (costs) to Google Voice or get a free number from google voice.
Get a nexus 6 (unlocked). Go to ting and get both a GSM SIM and a a CDME/LTE SIM fo rthe phone (micro SIMS).
Activate both. You will have two numbers, but it does not matter. Forward your GV number to both.
There are some settings changes you will need to make, but once all is done, you can use the nexus 6 on -Tmobile and Sprint depending on coverage. Both are good, but not as good as verizon coverage in rural areas. All you need to do is swap SIMS.
Get it set up in advance, as it can take a while for ports into GV and forwarding to propagate correctly.
In a pinch you can carry two phones one on CDMA and one on GSM and do the same. That is what I used to do. More to carry, but I could keep one charging while burning GPS/battery etc on the other phone. That will also use more data as both phones are doing their thing on Ting at the same time for whatever apps you have running.
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Coming from Europe, the mobile communications experience in the US is what one would expect from a Third World country, not from the US. Service is slow, expensive, unreliable and not very flexible.
I don't think it's possible to answer your question adequately without more information.
Where are you going in the U.S.? Is it large cities, or out of cities? Just where in the U.S.? Real world coverage is better in some places with some carriers than in others... The U.S. is huge.
Also if you are going to conventions be aware that some places have local repeaters from some companies but not others - AT&T or Verizon might have exclusive access to prove improved coverage at some particular location (especially conventions in hotels).
Outside of cities data server might be hit or miss no matter who you have...
I have T-Mobile and love them, mainly because I have the opposite problem - I travel outside the U.S. a lot, and I get free (slower) data just about world-wide with T-Mobile (and have an unlimited data plan). I'm a bit surprised you don't get the reverse effect from your carrier with T-Mobile, you may want to call them and ask because perhaps all they have to do is flip a switch in their system to let you roam in the U.S. for free.
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They may look good, low prices and no overage charger (only reduced speed) but for most of the country it will have no service or Edge (slow 2g). We have tmobile and it sucks when traveling. Soon as your outside a city you loose coverage. Try verizon, best coverage but most expensive. Turn off all your iphone autoupdates for both system and apps, that will help.
For my ReadySim works fine when I visit the US.
Say what you want, but at least Lennart doesn't post to the wrong thread.
He ain't going to go out and buy a new phone with dual sim just to make traveling a little easier, that would be a waste of money.
Sorry. Slashdot's latest rev appears to have supressed subject lines and titles once I open a thread. I posted to the wrong tab.
Have gnu, will travel.
Yeah ill just leave this here as people seem to forget that they do make dual sim adapters for iphones.
http://www.magic-sim.com/categ...
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Any time I'm in the US, I take out the T-Mobile 7 day plan. It's $15, if memory serves (if toy already have a card, otherwise add $15 to that for the card and registration), and comes with 1Gb data. It's not terribly fast, but good enough for email and stuff where you are away from WiFi.
I made a road trip from California to Vermont and back this June. I started off using Simple Mobile which operates on the T-Mobile network because it has the best connectivity at my home. Heading Northeast from San Diego through Utah and Western Colorado I had decent service through Denver. I lost service East of Denver and did not regain it again until half way through Kansas. Coverage between Kansas and Vermont was generally satisfactory except in some extremely rural areas. On my return trip I was a bit concerned about weather conditions and decided that I wanted better data coverage. I bought a prepaid Straight Talk sim kit at a Walmart in Ohio and switched over. The sim kit has sims for connectivity on the T-Mobile and AT&T GSM networks as well as provisions for connecting on the Verizon and Sprint CDMA networks. I selected the AT&T sim and I had pretty good coverage through Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota and North Dakota as long as I was on a major highway. Coverage in Montana was a bit spotty because we were headed to Glacier National Park near the Canadian border. I had good coverage all the way down the West coast. The cost is reasonable at $45 for 30 days unlimited talk, text and 5 GB of 4G LTE data and unlimited 2G data after the 5 GB is used up.
If only in major metro areas T-Mobile has good coverage.
If always within range of an interstate AT+T will cover you well and be compatible with most European devices.
If in rural North Dakota, etc Verizon's 3G is the only game in town.
Verizon is the only good choice for good coverage outside of cities. You will pay a lot. If you don't want to pay a lot, then get something cheap and spend your time looking for free wifi. There's no really good, inexpensive option.
The US is vast. It will be a long time before all the networks fill in their coverage holes and have to mostly compete on price. If bandwidth keeps increasing, it may be forever.
I've used an AT&T MiFi Liberate over the past 2.5 years, and it has met my expectations. However, I'm about to drop them because of their price. Their cheapest package is 5 GB for $50/month. I don't need that much data, and you don't get refunds or rollovers for unused data. If you had an Android, you can define metered Wi-Fi networks by going to Settings -> Data usage -> [vertical 3 dots] -> Network restrictions, and toggle on the Wi-Fi SSIDs that aren't unlimited. I don't know if iOS has anything similar.
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I traveled the US for a year from 2013 to 2014 and my [unlimited] LTE service from Verizon was better than any WiFi service I got from resorts and hotels except at three locations For the first half of the trip, I tethered through my Galaxy Nexus phone. For the second half, I used a Galaxy S5. My switch to the S5 happened around the time Verizon started rolling out XLTE in major cities and the speed increase was noticeable. I got up to 80 megs down and 40 up near Atlanta. Verizon's expensive but they have the best coverage. I've also used T-Mobile and AT&T but T-Mobile's coverage was miserable and AT&T couldn't reliably deliver data.
If you know where you are going, you'll be able to get the best solution for you by seeing who offers good service in those locations.
Otherwise, go with one of the big carriers like ATT, Sprint, or Verizon or one of their re-sellers. If you were only traveling in big cities I would add T-Mobile to that list but since you say you are traveling in rural areas, I would only get them if you are sure they cover the areas you are in.
If you a lot of data (say, more than 10GB/month or so), you may be better off getting a multi-SIM hotspot or multiple hotspots, and use the one that gives you the best bandwidth at the time you need it. I say this because in some areas you'll get 4G or LTE on one carrier but only 3G or even worse on another carrier, or you'll get a very congested signal on one carrier but a much less congested one on another.
Sadly, in many rural areas that are away from heavily-traveled roads you'll be stuck with either less-than-3G coverage or "roaming" coverage from a non-major-brand cell service provider, which can get expensive fast. Make sure your plan includes free or at least reasonably-priced off-network data roaming so you don't get sticker shock at the end of the month.
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I have been a fan of H2O Bolt Wireless 4G service.
Basically, it's re-branded AT&T service.
https://bolt.h2owirelessnow.co...
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Like them or not, they are pretty much the only game in town if you are really going to be rural. Every once in awhile when visiting a small rural town I'll ask someone what the recommended provider is in their area - and the answers are pretty much all Verizon.
There's nothing capitalistic about the American cellular market - it is so heavily regulated there is effectively no real competition like you'd see in a real free market. Of course these 'regulations' are nothing more than protectionist schemes bought and paid for. This chronyism is not capitalism in anyway way, shape, or form but rather some classical conservative feudalism and neoliberal socialism bastard child.
and they all carried multiple phones from multiple carriers. I'll second the "not t-mobile" crowd though. IIRC there was an arstechnica article that talked about the problem, they don't own much of the kind of bandwidth that lets you cover large distances. So they're 4G is fast but if you get out of a populated area you're not getting signal.
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Three cap unlimited plans when roaming to 25Gb
Hey anonymous Scandinavian neighbor.
I have myself been in your shoes, and never seemed to get a proper answer, simply because the US mobile market seems totally screwed compared to the "Scandinavian" offers.
I travel to US often too, and have ended up in using T-Mobile starting with a $30 Walmart Starter pack. It had unlimited talk, text and "unlimited" data with 5GB on 4G (EDGE after 5GB).
I wanted to keep the number, so when home I change the plan to "Pay as you go" (no roaming available) which is a $3 monthly plan, this is just to keep the phone number. If you don't need it you can discard it.
When I return to US I simply change the plan to whatever suits me (usually $80 everything unlimited plan).
I usually travel west coast, but coverage has been fine, though some holes in desert/rural areas. And yeah even on 4G there can be areas where speed is slow as EDGE probably due to overloaded cells.
If you go for this idea, there are some things to remember.
- If you want to keep the number you have to register an account with My-Tmobile while in US due to SMS activation (since international roaming is an extra service/fee)
- When changing plans there is a turn period. Usually I change the plan near my departure and make a chat session with customer service and ask them to make the change of plan immediately, rather than have to wait. Funny enough, downgrading a plan is effective immediately.
Of course this might not be the best or cheapest option, but it was the easiest and has been for me.
The Google Fi project has been looking promising, but the requirement of a Nexus phone does not please me.
For £15 you can get a sim with 20GB of data to use in a month in the US
This is probably the solution... if you live in the UK and visit the US for short periods. Yes, any voice calls to/from US phones count as "international" but if you call home it just counts as normal minutes. Yes, even if you have the 'unlimited data' plan, you only get 25GB when you're in the US - but that's probably still better than the locals are getting.
However it only makes sense if you live in the UK and use Three as your regular network. ISTR you need to have been subscribed for a month before they'll enable roaming. I assume that you can't sign up without a UK address - even if you can it's not going to make sense. So its not going to be a solution for our Scandinavian OP.
Unless some Scandinavian networks are offering a similar deal....
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Get a Verizon iPad mini and use the prepaid plan on it. You'll get the best coverage, a wifi hotspot, and a tablet. :-)
The tablet plan is cheaper than the Mifi plan for some reason, unless I'm reading their plans wrong.
What, me worry?
Basically, the high-level answer is that you probably aren't going to find exactly what you want. I've had all four major providers in recent years. Pretty much anything else you get is going to be a MVNO reselling one of the big four. (Google Fi is different in that it's reselling both Sprint and T-mobile.) Here is my experience, primarily in California, but also in several places I travel to on the East Coast:
* Sprint can be borderline useless. The coverage was so bad that I missed many phone calls. And the data coverage completely fails in shocking places, like, say downtown San Francisco. I used a Galaxy Nexus on Sprint for 18 months and was miserable.
* T-mobile has the best plans. You can get unlimited high-speed data pretty easily (which is not the same as what they call unlimited data) and use it for tethering (google "tether_dun_required"). Moreover, unlike other carriers, they are transparent about their throttling policies. If you are in the top 3% of data users (over 21GB/month), you get deprioritized, but not throttled.
* Verizon has the best coverage, but you will pay through the nose for the 100GB/month you intend to use. Also, for iPhone it might matter less, but Verizon seems to be the most aggressive about "customizing" their Android phones with bloatware and value-reducing software. For example, they make it hard to tether. Even on my rooted Nexus 6 I can't figure out how to tether with the stock android distro, because it installed some kind of crap when I inserted the Verizon sim. Note that you *can* buy grandfathered unlimited high-speed data plans on ebay, but this is going to be super expensive for you, and probably not work if you can't do post-paid. Also, it doesn't seem like a good investment for the future, because they can take your plan away. (I had an unlimited data plan on 3G, and they wouldn't give me a SIM card for 4G unless I changed to a metered plan.)
* AT&T seems like a not great compromise between T-mobile and Verizon. The coverage is better than T-mobile, but nowhere near as universal as Verizon. Particularly in California, there are many places AT&T does not work. AT&T also doesn't have great data plans, and customizes their phones more than T-mobile. A few years ago, AT&T's voice quality was really bad. I dropped them after doing an experiment where swapping the SIM card for a T-mobile one into the same phone made call quality noticeably better.
So after many years of switching between carriers and finding none is perfect, I now have two phones. I use a T-mobile phone for day-to-day stuff and (of course) when traveling internationally, and a Verizon phone for when I'm in areas with no coverage. I also have a Verizon hotspot, which I use for data. And when the Verizon hotspot stops working well because I'm surrounded by too many other data hogs, I switch over to tethering with T-mobile (whose network seems to be less loaded in the places I travel).
So my high-level message to someone who wants to come to the US 3-4 times a year and use 100GB of data in rural areas but not pay too much? Lower your expectations, as you will have to compromise on something.
I highly recommend FreedomPop. They have an inexpensive hotspot and give you up to 200MB free.Here is a link to their 4G hotspot.
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I feel you. My wife and I travel to the US once or twice a year, and do want continuous connectivity. My experience: pay-as-you-go for data sucks in the US. Coverage is a problem. Americans can't call non-US numbers. If you want to use your cell connection as a broadband replacement, expect to pay through the nose.
Since some of our family live in the boondocks, T-Mobile and Sprint are not really an option, and even AT&T coverage is spotty. Having driven extensively through "fly over" country, Verizon seems to be the only provider with close to full coverage. As others have pointed out here, if you're mostly staying in cities (100k+), you might be OK with the others as well.
For the last four years, we had a Mifi on contract ($50/month), with 5G of data. Until this year, Verizon allowed suspending the contract when we were out of the country, and re-activating it just before we got to the US again. Unfortunately, the suspension is now limited to a max. of 90 days per year. Since most of our friends and family don't have international calls enabled on their contracts, they can't call our European numbers. So we did continue to have an AT&T Go SIM ($100/year to keep the account active). As others have pointed out, the pay-as-you-go options don't have international roaming enabled, or might not even offer it (boo AT&T), so dealing with that from abroad can be a pain. Before that, we tried various options, including VirginMobile (uses Sprint) and T-Mobile.
We've now convinced a friend to get us on his family plan with Verizon, and we have one iPhone (incl. tethering) on there for $15/month. We're sharing his 12GB data, which is good enough for our purposes. Since the phone is on contract, international roaming is available. We did buy the phone, so there's no SIM lock on it, and we can use it with other SIMs.
While in the US, we use about 1GB per week. Most nights, we're somewhere where we have Wifi, so it's mostly on the move usage (navigation in the car, music, FB posts, etc.) Hotel wifi mostly sucks, so when we're staying in a hotel, we're using the cell data. For large downloads or uploads, we try and wait until we're back on Wifi, but I've been syncing my photos and videos with iCloud and Dropbox as I'm taking them, so we're not completely constraining ourselves.
>Your phone doesn't know the hotspot is metered. It has no way of knowing that the hotspot has a data cap. Yeah, but on most other operating systems you can tell the device that certain SSIDs are metered connections, so it will not do things like downloading 2GB OS updates over that link in the background.
I'm going the other direction. I'm from the U.S. but frequently work contracts in Canada.
Consider getting a dual sim phone. (Yeah, the providers really don't want to mention you can have two phone numbers and two providers in one phone) One SIM is AT&T for the U.S. and the other in my phone is Virgin Mobile for Canada.
AT&T and Verizon have the greatest footprint for coverage in the U.S. T-Mobile and Sprint have better plans but rarely have signal except in urban areas or along major highways. You know where you are going and can decide if coverage is a bigger issue than cost.
I chose Virgin Mobile in Canada as they piggy back on Bell Canada that has the most extensive coverage. (Yeah, I often work out in the boondocks) You can do the same in the U.S. by picking an economy carrier that piggy backs on either Verizon or AT&T.
Link to an article at PC-World on economy carriers in the U.S. and they let you know which major network they piggy back on.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2878298/10-alternative-carriers-that-can-save-you-serious-cash-on-your-smartphone-bill.html
I use a dual SIM phone made by BLU (Bold Like Us). http://www.bluproducts.com/ They are only sold direct and not by any of the carriers. Dual SIM BLU phone with 5000mAh battery can be found on Amazon or eBay.
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Spending hundreds on some oddball phone to use a couple times a year just for data is silly. Just go to Starbucks and leech wifi.
I've always used Verizon (for several years now via Straighttalk), because on paper their coverage outside of cities looks better than the rest, including AT&T. But on several recent road trips between Baltimore and West Virginia on I-70 and I-68, I've had zero (as in zilch, none, nada) Verizon coverage from Hagerstown MD west to and including Fairmont WV, while my daughter's AT&T (Straighttalk) has fine coverage almost all the way. So I'm wondering whether the on-line maps I've found are really accurate. http://opensignal.com/ does seem to show Verizon disappearing past Hagerstown, and AT&T continuing, which at least in this case seems to match reality.
How reality is outside of the couple areas I've traveled, I don't know. Along the interstate is usually good, off that...YMMV.
Last time I was in the UK, I bought a SIM from 3 and one of the features I didn't realise at the time was that I could use my phone abroad with that SIM exactly as I had in the UK. After I finished in the UK, I flew to Denmark and when I fired up the phone 3DK welcomed me to their network allowing me to use my unlimited UK data and also call and be called from UK numbers as if I was still in the UK. This was amazing based on previous experience with roaming from country to country. I drove over to Sweden and the same thing happened. Now that's all well and good, but what about the US? Turns out, when I landed in LAX, I was welcomed to AT&T's network and my unlimited data continued to work (3G only but still, not bad) and then I flew on to NZ and found myself on 2Degrees and still the phone and data worked. If you're not already with 3, I would strongly suggest switching. You can always buy a local cheap phone in the US for doing calls to US numbers, or do as I did and get some Skype credit which will go over the data.
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Especially in rural areas. It is the only service that is available for reception at our winter camp in Arizona, and is more widely available in West Virginia than other cell companies. Their hot spot only costs $25 for the hardware, and it works in rural areas where geography doesn't interfere with connections to the cell network.
They offer 12 GB monthly if I recall their advertising correctly, but you are correct, it isn't cheap.
Good luck. We are so screwed compared to Europe, Japan, S Korea, etc. Terrible availability, tiny bandwidth for data, terrific prices for the companies, all of them.
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