My experience in the USA 2008
 

Hi,

Just got back from a trip to the USA and thought I'd share my experiences with regard to prepaid SIM options. I managed to buy an AT&T prepaid SIM from one of the AT&T stores in Boston which cost $25 but included $25 of credit valid for 90 days. One word of warning though - make sure you buy from a proper AT&T store as the first independant store I visited in New York City wanted to charge me $85 for exactly the same item! My sim was active immediately and came setup on the plan where they charge $1 daily charge on days the phone is used and $0.10 per minute for calls made/received.

The interesting thing I discovered that I hadn't seen mentioned on here before was the un-advertised Unlimited Media Net add-on which for $19.99 gives 1 month of unlimited internet access. This was instantly activated and deducted from my balance by calling the service number (611 as far as I recall). This worked on my phone (Nokia E71) and in my USB dongle modem with EDGE and was actually rather quick. It would have also worked on 3G but sadly none of my handsets or modem supported AT&T's 850/1900 3G bands but it would be ideal for those of you that have an iPhone or US frequency 3G handset as AT&T's 3G coverage looks pretty good now.

Finally, for repeat visitors if you topup by $100 the sim is valid for 365 days and although it doesn't roam anywhere except for Mexico it can also be topped up online which should make it possible to keep it alive between visits.

Hopefully this info is of use to others visiting the USA in the near future.

Nice report.

Actually, the $19.99 unlimited data add on has been mentioned in a number of threads. Unfortunately, they are stopping the data plan next month.

http://gadgetblips.com/story/at_t_to...one_data_plan/

That figures. I'm going to New York in December and was going to take advantage of the data plan.

Oh well. Hopefully there is cheap WiFi at my hotel. :)

The last day to purchase it is Nov 12. Since you can stack the plan for 90 days (see link below) you can purchase it in Nov, and pay for Nov and Dec. The question is is it worth $40 just for the time you will be using it.

http://wapreview.com/blog/?p=1381

Can you get the unlimited internet everthing plan from TMobile on flex pay?

For some markets, this could also be a solution:

http://www.mycricket.com/broadband/

Thanks for the tip Bossman. I'll ponder whether it makes sense to take advantage of that possibility.

I have bought an at&t sim on ebay $8, activated it while in europe. When you purchase $25 online you get an extra $10 after 5 days.

On ebay there were lots of t-mobile cards offering 1 month unlimited calling, internet etc.

What made me choose att was there very good coverage throughout the usa. Looking at the t-mobile map there coverage seemed to be very poor. Only in big cities and around that you have good receiption but outside them only close to the big main highways. Last sunday i took a scenic route and had good receiption almost all the way even through some bigger hills and forest area. This was a nice surprise.

When someone calls my att number I also get charged $0.10 per minute for receiving the call unless the caller uses another att cellphone. calls to and from att seem to be free.

I use the card also to call my own did number (us based) and through pbxes.com I setup a callthrough so I can make cheap call to europe.

At the moment i am still in the USA and everything works fine.

So when buying a US sim check first if you have good coverage. If you are staying in a city all the time t-mobile is the cheapest by buying a 1 month valid unlimted sim. When travelling take the att sim.

T-Mobile has less native coverage than AT&T, but T-Mobile's prepaid offering roams on many other US carriers' networks. AT&T's prepaid offering does not, unfortunately, permit roaming.