Travelling the USA and cell phones - help!

Hi all,

 

I will be travelling in the USA later this year on an extensive photo

trip and to cut a long story short, my wife is already getting

anxious about me being away for a month. In order to placate her I

am hoping to buy a cheap (preferably prepaid) cell phone for use in

the USA so that she can send me text messages.

 

Phones seem to be readily available on ebay for under $100, but I

need to know is it hard to get a prepaid number? What process do I

need to do? Are the phones useable countrywide? Is text messaging

available in the USA?

 

Finally, how much can I expect to pay for a number and some prepaid

credit (sufficient to send some international text messages). I

assume that I can send international text messages!

 

Any help will be appreciated!

 

Sorry for the OT post, but this is important and I figured that you

guys were my best bet at getting some info.

 

Cheers,

 

Antony

Why not talk to your local phone company? They are aware of this requirement and can probably do something. Most phone providers are multinational. You may just be able to put a new SIMM card in your phone.

Mobiles in the US use a different frequency and you'll need a

tri-band phone to use it in the US. On mine I have to switch the

phone onto the US frequency manually- ie it doesn't

automatically react to the signal - though this isn't complex and

there's a lot of tri-band phones available in the UK these days.

 

The easiest way I've found to communicate from US to UK is to

buy a prepaid phone card from gas stations or groceries etc over

there. These offer a very reasonable rate to call the UK- a lot

better than you'd get using a hotel phone. You dial an access

number in the US- it tells you how much credit you have left and

you dial the call. I phone home daily this way and it costs a

pound or two, not a fortune. I still carry a mobile, but thats more

for in-USA emergencies than calling home.

 

There is an alternative, and that's to take out an account with a

company called Swiftcall, based in Dublin I think. They are the

proverbial alternative telephone company and their main

business is calling from UK-overseas rather than vice versa.

However they do have roaming arrangements that include the

US which cost (from memory ) about 20p per minute. You

charge your account here in £ before you go and it works just like

the US prepaid cards. One word of warning though- I have had

the occasional difficulty in accessing them from hotel phones in

the US .

Antony:

 

You can buy a prepaid phone from Virgin Mobile at most Target Stores. The prices start around sixty dollars and they take about fifteen minutes to set up. (you should be able to do it from a motel room or public phone)

 

My wife has used a Virgin prepaid phone for months now and has never used the text feature. They do have a website that explains the service though.

GSM is available in more and more urban areas, but out of the city you will be without signal for long times. The other option is one of the local digital variants (PCS, CDMA), but I am not sure if text messaging between those and GSM is possible.

My experience in the States has been that text messaging sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. This is true whether I've been sending/receiving messages within the States or to the UK. It's fun but for me hasn't been that reliable. This country is big and there are plenty of locations outside of major cities where you won't get good service. I'd suggest using voicemail as I've found it more reliable.

 

I'd also second the suggestion to get a Virgin Mobile prepaid phone from a Target store. I've never used one, but in your shoes it's what I'd try. Who knows, maybe their text messaging service works better.

 

I wouldn't buy a phone on ebay...you will probably find that setting up service on a phone you already own is more expensive than getting a new phone with service...and you can't get prepaid service on every phone.

When we were on sabbatical in California earlier in the year, my wife got a prepaid account with ATT (outlets almost every block in Berkeley at least) which allowed text messaging to any email account and came with a refurbished Nokia phone for an extra $20.

There are pre-paid phones available and that seems like the best bet. What I wouldn't count on is necessarily full coverage in remote areas. The main interstate highway areas and major urban areas are pretty well covered but the more varied the topography, the less likely you are to have consistent access. I don't know that I'd count on an E-bay source. Besides Target, you might also want to try Radio Shack, another national chain. We found we got the best advise and service from out local Radio Shack even when compared to local representatives of the various providers.

I used to work in telecom and I could never figure out the cell phone system, which phones cover which areas, who's networks you can use etc. etc,

 

For example I have a Virgin Mobile phone (it's cheap and I don't use it much). However as far as I can tell it uses only the Sprint PCS network - but you can only make calls from areas directly served by that network, which means major metropolitan areas and interstates. There's no "roaming" coverage - which you could get with a real Sprint PCS phone. I assume this is because you're working on prepaid billing and there's no way for another network to know how much credit you have left on your phone.

 

If you want wide area coverage I don't know if you can get that pre-paid. Most "regular" billed cell phones have a minimum contract which may be longer than your trip.

 

Makes you wish for the good old days with one phone company and one phone system where everything worked and where you didn't have to try to figure out which phone works on which network in which state...

I know it's not as glamorous or modern, but it might be cheaper or at least easier, do it the old fashioned way. Of course, as Bob noted, the old (almost) monopoly is gone. Not all the systems charge the same ways and many hotels and the like seem to have decided that phones can be a great profit center. With your country code, you should be able to call home but charging becomes a bit of a problem. You might want to find out how you can call home collect.

The US digital cellular system is terrible compared to the rets of the world.

 

Make sure you buy a digital mobile with the prepaid system. There are many brands available, these are the only ones that you can SMS to the British, european / African networks from.

Your UK sim can work in a tri band phone in USA (unlocked) and send and recieve messages in the international comunity on your existing number. it costs alot.

Buy the cheepest prepaid Digital mobile in usa, it costs about 75 dollars.

G

I travel in the States quite a lot and find that calling card services are a much better option.

 

I use a service from IDT that costs 10c per minute to the UK from any phone including call boxes. I doubt that you can send a text message to the UK for 10c and one minute of conversation is a lot more useful.

 

It is a pay as you go system. They tell you how much credit you have whenever you make a call and you can recharge your account with a credit card.

 

I can't remember how I found about them (probably an in-flight magazine) but try looking at http://www.idt.net/products/debit/gc

 

There are probably loads of companies that offer these services but both my sister and I have used IDT and can vouch that it works.