Heading over to the US for two weeks in a month and was thinking about buying a SIM card so that I can use the internet on my phone without paying horrendous data roaming charges. Only thing is I know nothing about the networks in America.
Is it possible to buy a pre pay card and some text & data bundles (I probably won’t need minutes) ? If so, what networks are good and what kind of price would I be looking at?
T-Mobile and AT&T are the main GSM carriers in the US. AT&T’s prepaid service is called GoPhone; T’Mobile’s is cleverly called T-Mobile Prepaid.
T-Mobile does unlimited talk and text for a month with 100 Megs of data for $60 and with 2 Gigs of Data for $70.
I’m not sure how easy it is to come by an activatable SIM for either one; it may be easier to buy a dirt cheap prepaid phone (maybe $10) and put the SIM in your phone.
I’m assuming you have an unlocked phone., if not you’ll have to unlock it. What I did and this was a few ago, was buy a cheap phone at Walmart, pull out the sim card and put it into my higher end phone. This way I was able to use pay as I go and still have the features of my phone. Of course if you’re only going be around for a couple of weeks, you could just use the cheap ass phone.
If you have a friend in the states you could order this and plug it into your phone when you arrive.
Good luck.
Also - where are you coming from? You might want to be careful about 3G band support. AT&T and T-Mobile use different bands.
T-Mobile uses band 4 (1700). AT&T uses bands 2 and 5/6. (850/1900, I think).
-D/a
Yeah, the 1700-MHz band is an odd one. Many phones, including all iPhones so far, don’t support it.
I am an ATT GoPhone customer with an old iPhone.
If your phone can function on ATT, getting a SIM card is easy, just walk into an ATT store and sign up for the plan you want (10 cent/min, $2/day, $60-75/month). Might be best to got to a real ATT store, not a reseller kiosk.
Data is not well supported, best to rely on WiFi if you can (see the bottom of this page).
When I arrived at LAX there was a T-Mobile booth in the terminal that sold me a prepaid SIM card to put in my phone. I’m afraid I can’t remember how much I paid for it, though.
I have a HTC desire, which as far as I know is quadband so should definitely work in the US. Didn’t realise that not all phones in the US have SIM cards - this is very much the kind of info I’m looking for 
Is there an equivalent to “pay as you go” in the US, i.e. you don’t have to sign up for any sort of monthly contract, just put money in your phone and have the cost of messages/minutes/data subtracted from that? Any general info would be great as it seems to be very different on this side of the pond.
E.T.A: My main interest here is the data charges. I’d like to be able to use things like Google Maps/Navigation without paying through the nose.
Not only do not all phones in the US have SIM cards, but the majority of phones in the US do not have SIM cards. Our #1 and #3 providers, Verizon and Sprint, both use CDMA and don’t use SIM Cards. #2 and #4, AT&T and T-Mobile (which will merge and become #1 if it goes through), use SIM cards but as noted upthread, T-Mobile uses odd frequencies vs what is used internationally so you’ll need to have a phone that supports them. If they do, you can get a prepaid T-mobile plan with Unlimited Talk/Text + 2GB data for $70/mo - http://www.t-mobile.com/shop/plans/prepaid-plans.aspx