Pre paid SIM card in US

[drewbles]

I was thinking it would be better to get a SIM card in the US rather than do the roaming thing. We'll mainly be using it for SMS to Aussie/NZ, or for finding out where one of us has disappeared to! Hubby's got a habit of being right beside me one minute, and then the next minute he's gone. My phone is a dinosaur, I've had it for 7 years. Its a Nokia 6100. Will it work in the USA? Hubby's is a Motorola Razr V3.

Dropped you a PM with a run down on your handsets and our SIM cards

 

[drewbles]

I think phones for the US have to be tri-band, so you'll probably have to check online at the Nokia site. Should have it listed there.

I've done roaming in the past for Europe and racked up a bill of $200 in 3 weeks before it got stolen, which ended up getting stolen, which was good in a way.

One of my bibles here at work: GSMArena.com - GSM phone reviews, news, opinions, votes, manuals and more... has just about every mobile ever made. Great run down on handsets and a lot of them link to manufacturers websites for manuals too.

If I ever get a fault from our customer service guys this is usually the first port of call to check their handset

 

[Nessa1977]

The sim card I purchased arrived yesterday...with a note stating that it expires next month.

I contacted the seller seeking a refund, as this was not stated on the auction.

I'm obtaining a refund.

Looks like I'll be buying the sim card from the US myself. Do Virgin cell sim cards alone or do I need the whole phone (link above)?

 

[drewbles]

The sim card I purchased arrived yesterday...with a note stating that it expires next month.

I contacted the seller seeking a refund, as this was not stated on the auction.

I'm obtaining a refund.

Looks like I'll be buying the sim card from the US myself. Do Virgin cell sim cards alone or do I need the whole phone (link above)?

Have a read through this thread. Myself and others have suggested various options for US Pre-Paid GSM services

 

[jsd]

Do Virgin cell sim cards alone or do I need the whole phone (link above)?

I have emailed Virgin USA about this as i am curious myself, from a google search apparently the resell off sprint which is a CDMA network.

You would probally pay the same price for the sim as you would for a full phone package.

I will get back to you guys when i hear back from virgin



Josh

 

[Nessa1977]

I had a quick look at the packages and wasn't sure what to get. There's one with just talk time and another with just text and messaging time (something like that).

I'll have to have a more thorough look into the plans with Virgin or other phone companies.

I would prefer to use my own phone so I can SMS and Facebook etc.

 

[jsd]

Cell Phone Plans - Prepaid, Pay As You Go Phone Plans | Virgin Mobile

Found more info on the Pay As You Go Plans, seems fairly reasonable



Josh

 

[kiwi2768]

Thanks drewbles. Will give it some thought.

Looking from another angle, as we don't travel all that much, thought about just getting a pre-paid in the US and using our own SIM cards on roaming in Canada. We will only be in Canada for about a week.

 

[drewbles]

Thanks drewbles. Will give it some thought.

Looking from another angle, as we don't travel all that much, thought about just getting a pre-paid in the US and using our own SIM cards on roaming in Canada. We will only be in Canada for about a week.

All our SIM cards have USA/Canada as standard and will likely be cheaper than getting two SIM cards.

Virgin is Sprint/Nextel, a CDMA provider. You won't be able to use your own handset with them.

They also only have 8 or so handsets available.

Our SIM will also give you full coverage on AT&T *and* T-Mobile, giving you pretty much no blackspots in major areas. In Canada, you can use Rogers with our SIM.

 

[jsd]

They also only have 8 or so handsets available.

Thats no different to Virgin Mobile Australia or Telstra for that matter, imagine how much of a nightmare it would be to support milions of different phones with different configurations, that would be nightmare for any company.

I have used Virgin's US mobile service and go for them with the fact that to call back to aus is the same as calling any other mobile in the same country, highly recommended



Josh

 

[Nessa1977]

My phone runs on the Telstra 3G network (Nokia N95). Does this mean my phone won't work in the US with their sim cards?

 

[NM]

My phone runs on the Telstra 3G network (Nokia N95). Does this mean my phone won't work in the US with their sim cards?

Nokia N95 will work just fine as a phone in the USA. Its a "quad-band" GSM phone.

 

[drewbles]

Thats no different to Virgin Mobile Australia or Telstra for that matter, imagine how much of a nightmare it would be to support milions of different phones with different configurations, that would be nightmare for any company.

I have used Virgin's US mobile service and go for them with the fact that to call back to aus is the same as calling any other mobile in the same country, highly recommended



Josh

Totally different. There are no CDMA networks in Australia, 3/Telstra/Optus/Voda all use UMTS for 3G and GSM for 2G. Any handset with the right frequencies will work, providing they're unlocked and you change your SIM.

All the carriers here have dozens and dozens of handsets. The reason Virgin do not is simple. The market for CDMA is far far smaller than GSM/UMTS so the manufacturers produce a far smaller range.

CDMA is all but dead in most the world. There is some CDMA2000 which is in use in competition to UMTS in some parts of the world, but that's still small in comparison (with the exception of Verizon in the US who are using something similar to this).

 

[woolnough04]

I'm off to the states in april.I have a telstra zte f165 which telstra said will work there but suggested putting an american sim in it.I found a company called "red pocket mobile"and ordered a prepaid sim from an australian distributor.Hopefully it will would ok.Supposed to be able to activate it before leaving.Has anyone used "red pocket mobile".

 

[RB]

Rather than start a new thread, I would like to ask a question re whether the previously suggested suggestions are also solutions for Alaska. We are going to Alaska first then visiting some of the "lower " states, will have an unlocked Nokia 6120 (next G)

 

[drewbles]

Rather than start a new thread, I would like to ask a question re whether the previously suggested suggestions are also solutions for Alaska. We are going to Alaska first then visiting some of the "lower " states, will have an unlocked Nokia 6120 (next G)

I know our service works there (our service has full AT&T and T-Mobile Coverage, and many other smaller carriers; the US has a lot of in-state providers that aren't very well publicised but we roam on most of them as well).

The 6120 is HSDPA 850/2100 and Quad Band GSM so you'd have no issues using it with our service. Others should also be similar.

 

[drewbles]

I'm off to the states in april.I have a telstra zte f165 which telstra said will work there but suggested putting an american sim in it.I found a company called "red pocket mobile"and ordered a prepaid sim from an australian distributor.Hopefully it will would ok.Supposed to be able to activate it before leaving.Has anyone used "red pocket mobile".

Red Pocket is an AT&T MVNO, so you'll have coverage only where AT&T have coverage (and potentially not AT&T partner networks or roaming extensions). It appears to be aimed at the asian-american market with them offering multi-lingual handsets (with chinese characters) and asian-language based support.

They've been around 3-4 years now. I don't know much else about them apart from that. Their rates don't seem too bad though for the coverage they offer.

 

[albatross710]

b) go to pinzoo.com or mrsimcard.com and purchase yourself some credit. you want at least $25.

Looks like they may have changed the procedures at Pinzoo. For the first purchase they need to be able to verify account details via a phone call to a USA landline phone number. I'll leave my first purchase of credit until I get to the states.

In the meantime the eBay guy from whom I purchased the sim card has offered to recharge the sim for me.

 

[albatross710]

US prepaid sim card had a minor issue. The card I pre purchased from the ebay guy didn't get recharged on time. When I inserted the Sim it said No Service. At that point I thought I had blown my money on that card.

I walked into an AT & T shop, bought a prepaid card with $15 credit and $20 data package. Total $35 gives me 100mb data and $3.00 day max and unlimited telephone minutes within US. Checked the calling, had my own Costa Mesa area code and had 3G displayed on iPhone.

Got an email back from my eBay guy. The card is also now working so I will switch to that card on the last few days instead of recharging this other card.

As for data access the iPhone didn't want to connect to the AT &T network. I used the Reset network settings a few times. Then i connected to a wifi network and ran the earlier mentioned APN changer for good measure. Still no luck even though the 3G was indicated as being connected. About the middle of the day when I had stopped frigging with the settings and left the phone sitting while I was in a meeting, the data came to life.

In summary, next time I would just go to an At & t store when i arrive making sure that the calls and data were working prior to leaving the store.

 

[Nessa1977]

I wonder if it the same person I bought the sim card off (on eBay), which was useless to me as the remaining credit expires this month, a fact which he did not state in his auction.