Prepaid Sim plan in US?
 

I travel to seattle once or twice per month to spend weekends , I have been looking into getting a prepaid sim card with data so I can go online etc ( looking for restaurant ) when needed . I was down there and I believe only 2 company has prepaid sims but when I visit the booth at the mall down there the staff have told me the data part would not work on my phone :confused:

anyone have more info on this ?

thanks !

If you go to Walmart you can buy a cheap ass phone with a prepay sim card. Thats what a number of buddies do and it works great.

Have data ?

Yes you can get data as well, of course the only issue is you will spend more for your phone. Unless your current one is unlocked then toss the sim card in.

roam mobility you can buy here
Posted via RS Mobile

There's also Simple Mobile

+1 for roam, you can pay by the day with data and unltd calling to usa and canada.

T-Mobile prepaid. 2$ a day us nationwide calling texting and 2g data. 3$ for calling texting 200mb 4g data.
You have to have a aws band phone to get 3g 4g speeds. So I just get the 2$ a day plan with 2g data (I have gsm sgs3)


Roam mobility uses T-Mobile network I believe.

Took a while to find the plans but here they are: prepaid-phones.t-mobile.com/pay-by-the-day-cell-phone-plans

So you have a robellus s3 and you can use their 2G? That's sweet I didn't know their 2G wasn't AWS.
Do you have to get it at a T-Mobile store? And I'm assuming the sim is extra? But is it reusable?

The simple should be reusable but if you're planning on more than 2 weeks simple mobile is better since its unlimited for 30 days. $40 for unlimited 3g. I'm glad my nexus is pentaband :)

Yeah I have a unlocked rogers sgs3. You can pick it up at a tmobile store or any tmobile kiosk. The guy at the kiosk said the sim was 10$ and comes preloaded with 2$ prepaid I believe. I prepaid 30$ and got the sim and $30 credit so I guess if you go over x amount the sim is free? Not sure, you can double check.

You have to set up the plan you want initially so if you pick the 2$ talk/text/2g a day. Whenever you plug in the sim and use it or your phone uses background data, you get dinged the 2$ a day automatically.

Balance expires every 90 days but you can get refills on your tmobile account website to fill up. $10 minimum refill for 90 days.

Calling back to canada is 0.49 / min.

As W2K stated, the T-Mobile plan is a good alternative if youre phoning within the US. For 2 bucks unlimited voice + data can't be beat. I opted for Roam though on my GN because its $3 for unlimited voice + text in North America. For $5 bucks more you also get 100mb of data.

+1 for T -Mobile.
$2 plan gives great value. Speed is great, too.

Using it on my N95, now.

so if the balance expires, does the sim card expire as well? say if i didnt visit the states for over 90 days, can i just reload the expire sim and use the same number the next time i visit the states?
Posted via RS Mobile

Simple mobile's $50 plan is actually a lot better than the plans in Canada, if people are considering spending a whole month in the states, its the best value. They use T-mobile's network.

SIMPLE Mobile | Unlimited Talk, Text & High Speed Web

Yeah. $50 is 4G speeds. You can save $10 if 3g is enough. It's worthwhile if you're gonna be spending 2 weeks or more in the states or you need a lot of data. Otherwise the other providers are better for short term.

I would vote for T-Mobile being the best option for weekend or day trips to the states.

Best used with a Pentaband phone like the Galaxy Nexus or Galaxy S2X since they use the AWS band that T-Mobile uses but if nationwide talk and text with some data is needed, GSM is also covered so just any unlocked GSM phone will work

1 thing you should do when you head back to Canada is login to the website and change your plan from the $2/3 a day plan to pay per minute so you don't get charged when you don't use it (and of course change it to the per day plans right before you head down the border)

Another thing that I noticed with T-Mobile while up here in Canada is that their text rates are quite decent even when used up here, not quite sure if its still 10c to send and 5c to receive but thats what I remember and sending rate is to anywhere in the world (from Canada or US) which is cheaper than the rates we get here from the Big 3 if you don't have a text plan

Also for people that use T-Mobile pre-paid, a really good way to top up that I use myself is callingmart.com ... I buy my top up codes from them and most of the time they have 5% (used to be 10%) off emails from time to time ... the codes come in instantly and I just enter them on the T-mo website when you login with your number.

Hopefully that helps some people thinking about getting a pre-paid sim ... its totally worth it and the credit expires every 90 days so just top up $10 every 90 days and it extends it until you reach $100 top up dollars then its 365 days before needing to top up again ...

+1 on this.

I just got back from Vegas and I used the T-Mobile $2/day plan and it cost me $8USD plus whatever tax for the entire trip.

it isn't fast or anything but it's enough to browse, use whatsapp, or anything else that you need. Used my unlocked Galaxy Nexus.