Lycamobile US
 

Lycamobile have launched their US service... Lycamobile | Low Cost international calls | Best international SIM card | Free SIMs

Preliminary data point to Lyca being a T-Mobile MVNO.

Pay per minute @ $0.04/minute for domestic calls.
$39/month for unlimited domestic calls, 100MB data and $10 international calling credit.
$49/month for unlimited domestic calls, 250MB data and $20 international calling credit.

Note the 'magic words' "Free SIMs".
On PAYGO:::: $0.04 for SMS to USA. $0.06/MB internet.
120 day no activity expiration. No clear info [=easily found] info on how long a top-up lasts. $5 minimum payment option is visible. Most international rates seem pretty good. And it also roams internationally. This looks very interesting. You might have to fight the web form a little to get your address in but it will work eventually.

Not a bad deal on the data front. Lyca's Toggle Mobile deal may be better for EU visitors... For voice at least :)

+Steve :)

I'm sorry but that Free Incoming Calls while roaming is too good to be true or to last. This will break down as soon as people (like me) who know how to turn free incoming into free outgoing get their hands on the SIM. Remember that for calling US mobile numbers, there's no cellular surcharge. No way this is going to work. They'll be broke in 3 months.

Yes, I was wondering about that - free incoming to a US number in Europe would be fantastic - although we do have a form of this at present with T-Mobile using UMA over Wi-Fi.

Lycamobile US looks like a great deal, and I'll certainly be trying it, but as in Lycamobile's other countries, its website does not inspire confidence (missing obvious information, bad links, atrocious grammar), and it has Lyca's annoying rapid expiration policy (which I have to admit isn't that bad compared to other US providers - but I suspect they could have made it 365 days if they'd felt like it).

Now if only they could do Canada.

yeah, the lyca websites are all looking like these etho-calling-card websites... their customer support is very good though (very indian accent speaking guys in the UK but very responsive and with good knowledge)

What's not clear is whether the quoted "4c/minute, 4c/text" price also applies to incoming communications. I know that it is the norm for North American networks to quote a single price which is understood by consumers to apply to both incoming and outgoing communications. However, this might not be the case here, given that incoming calls and texts are free when roaming and because Lycamobile is a British company which applies British conventions to foreign markets, e.g. no top-up requirement to maintain validity of credit.

In any case, I've never understood the North American convention of charging for incoming texts. Whilst I understand the economics of charging for incoming calls, the same rationale can't be applied to incoming texts. It's also not fair to charge for receiving a communication when the user has no option to reject it.

I signed up for one of their Free SIMs and a short time later received repeated calls from "1.123.456.7890", which I did not answer because of the bogus caller ID. I'm curious if anyone else got similar calls?

I don't understand or agree with this practice either but in the defense of the carriers I'll just say that most American customers have either unlimited domestic texting or a huge text bucket.

Nope.
 

Nope. Nada. Zilch. [to fulfill 10 character requirement.]