I read this forum on regular basis and reading through your posts it is clear that you do not seem to be happy with piranha. I am using and have for a long time used the piranha mobile sim when travelling to the states and many other countries and find the service and rates are very good. Also I note that the majority of people on this forum are very pro piranha and its service. I am curious as to why you alone seem to be having such a big issue with the network, I have a trip due to the lakes in Wisconsin next month for research and will need my phone to work.

It's one thing for a sim to have lots of features/bells and whistles, and it's another for it to be usable for the basic things when you really need it. See my post above - Piranha was not usable for me when I traveled. Bottom line, The thing would not register on the network. And if it does, it goes to emergency mode within minutes. I certainly do not plan on depending on it on my future trips.

gkeeper is not alone, I've used Piranha and generally it's fine, but there have been some reliability issues, once in Iceland and once somewhere else I don't recall. They are responsive in resolving them, but still.
Nevertheless, rates are very good, esp. for VOIP, incoming VOIP number same as GSM is great feature (using Acrobits for that), and I use it for international call forwarding even when not in a phone.
Carry a backup sim - there was a thread on this!

Earlier today I spoke to a colleague who is already in Wisconsin near Milwaukee who is also using the piranha Sim and asked if he had any reception connecting issues when using it and he says it is satisfactory and is happy using it. I was getting worried I would have to go on the Sim hunt again.

gkeeper, I agree with what others have already said: have a backup. If you're coming from the UK, chances are your UK SIM will work in the US, even if the rates are much higher, but at least then you know have an alternative if you encounter problems.

You should always carry a backup SIM. I've experience and seen horror stories with plenty of people using gold plated contract SIMs from first tier carriers.

Besides Piranha who would you recommend as a second sim provider in the US as backup

T-Mobile has been offering free prepaid SIM cards rather regularly through their website (bottom of the page) - though not at present. If you have some time you could keep an eye on that and order one, though obviously you'd have to have it shipped to a US address.

I was also looking at Truphone, which is another prepaid international SIM that uses T-Mobile's US network. Their SMS and data rates in the US are actually better than Piranha's: $.10 per SMS sent (free incoming), $.15 per MB data (billed every 100kb), calls being $.15 per minute incoming and outgoing. I haven't actually used their service much within the US but I haven't had any problems using their service outside the US.

The other thing you could look into is a SIM that runs on AT&T's network. Overall AT&T's coverage is better than T-Mobile's if you're going to be in more rural areas. Expect rates to be more expensive, though.

The easy answer is: "The one that works!'
Of course you do not find out which is
the one that does not
work until it is too late.

Since you are in the UK, I would suggest Tru or ekit. Both do the AT&T and T-Mobile networks. ekit actually does almost all GSM networks in the USA. If you happen to be travelling to some of the weird GSM places in the US, ekit might be better. I believe Wisconsin is one of those weird GSM places. {'lakes in Wisconsin definitely sound weird.} [As is some of the empty places in the West {Wyoming, Montana} and Maine]
Understand ekit's rates can be more--there is a connection fee that means shorter calls are more expensive, but longer ones would be cheaper. If you are using data, than Tru probably is the better choice.

Pertaining to the thread mentioned below. If you could get both Tru and Ekit along with already having Piranha, it would be braces and a belt and a rope.
The 'research' you mention is probably not "GSM coverage" in Wisconsin, but now it can be!

The thread in question is linked below:
http://www.prepaidgsm.net/forum/inte...html#post41610

Just got back from 3 weeks in China. Piranha took a couple hours to register and worked fine for incoming. I was using the SIM in a dumb phone. I stupidly contacted CS when I couldn't make outgoing calls. Stupidly - on my part - because all I had to do is do a battery pull reboot - which I should have done before calling them. (I forgot that even dumb phones need re-booting to get them going at times.) Outgoing then worked quite well - just a few seconds to get the call back connection.
I didn't need to use voice , much, because there is a 15 hour time diff. and that I could make use of T-Mobile's (U.S.) "automatic" wifi calling feature from my 3 y.o. BBerry from most hotels. Calls back to U.S. are free and almost as good as being on a cell tower. (T-M's Androids also have wifi calling builtin, but I didn't find using wife's Android as seamless in making calls via wifi. ) With a Blackberry I could do unlimited email for 67¢/day while there (or anywhere in the world where BB servers work).

I will tell my solution for data in China in a separate post.

Bottom line - Piranha works fine in China. The couple of test calls/SMS here in the U.S. worked fine as well. Did not use SMS on Piranha in China.