Prepaid GSM SIM for USA?
 

Hi,

My friend is about to travel to Canada and the US.

Is there any prepaid GSM SIM prepaid plan available that will cover both countries?
Are there plans that enable voice AND data?

Thanks.

For voice, eKit Simple Calling have a SIM that covers both the USA and Canada, roaming on multiple carriers. It roams on T-Mobile and AT&T in the US, and Rogers (GSM) and Telus (3G) in Canada, plus some minor carriers.

I've been using it for several years now, it's reliable.

eKit have several different sims. The one I use is 9c/min in the US (calling and receiving), 29c/min in Canada, PLUS a 50c connect charge per call. It has a US number. There are other "international" oens with a UK number as well that are less suitable for your needs, be sure to check carefully which one it is.

The best place to buy eKit sims is direct from eKit, on eBay, cheaper than their own store.

For short term prepaid data, there isn't really any affordable option in the USA and Canada with good coverage. But free wi-fi is everywhere (example: at 90% of the McDonalds in both countries), so it's easy to avoid having to use mobile data.

For data in the US, you can consider tmobile - They have unlimited data for $1.49/day. AT&T's rate are not so bad either. They just recently revamped it. As already mentioned, there is a lot of free wiFi in the US. So that may just be enough depending on your needs.

Thanks, guys.

As I said, this is for my friend, I'm not really sure he can rely on WIFI.

Bossman, sounds like the Tmobile solution is not really prepaid? As it has a daily charge (unless this is reduced from the remaining $ on the card, for every day of actual use?).
Can it be purchase on line and have it delivered to a US or Canada address? Because he's starting the trip in Canada, visiting relatives, and only afterwards will begin the US part of his trip.

And most important - he'll be using a GSM iPhone - do these SIM cards support it?

Does that have a normal size sim, or one of the little micro-sims? Assuming the phone is: 1. unlocked 2. has GSM 1900 band and ideally GSM 850 band and 3. uses a normal sim; then yes the eKit sim will work fine in both countries.

With 3G (850) coverage may be improved in some areas, but it's not essential to have 3G.

Not sure what you mean. It's prepaid. He signs up for it daily if he wants, and $1.49 is deducted from his credit.

RTuesday, he has an unlocked GSM iPhone 4 with a micro SIM. But he wants a data SIM, not a voice one (a combined SIM is OK though).
I'll check out the eKit.

I agree 3G is not essential, he's going to use the phone mostly for emails & browsing.

You should know that T-Mobile operate their 3G network at 1700/2100 MHz (so-called AWS-band), which the iPhone does not support, so with his iPhone your friend could only access T-Mobile's 2G network, which as any 2G network is relatively slow (theoretically up to 236 KBit/s which however in practice is often less).

Thank you, inquisitor.
Is that throughput equivalent to EDGE?

I also looked at the AT&T web site, found their prepaid sim option.
If he chooses AT&T, will he need to activate the SIM in some AT&T store?

Yes, I was actually referring to EDGE which delivers a maximum bandwidth of 236 KBit/s.

Thank you.

I'd still recommend using wi-fi for that, emails and browsing would normally be done at a coffee shop, hotel, etc. Much cheaper. It's nice to have always-on data, but across two countries for a short period of time it really does get expensive, an unneeded luxury.

About the T-Mobile option, it works on their prepaid SIMs & costs 1.49 for 24 hours which would be deducted out of the account's available balance. You would purchase a day pass every day when you are ready to use it that day. The data is claimed to work only on the native T-Mobile network. This is likely the cheapest form of temporary prepaid data available in the US at this time, especially if y7ou plan to use it a lo during each day.

T-Mobile prepaid works in both countries. However, if you use T-Mobile in Canada it will cost you 69¢/minute. Fido/Rogers roams in the US at $2.00 per minute (ouch!)

If you are browsing mobile websites, 2G (EDGE) may be acceptable, but if you go to regular (desktop-designated) websites, 2G is a pain. E.g. opening cnn.com generates a data volume of 1.1MB. With full EDGE-speed (236 KBit/s) this would take half a minute to load. However if you realistically consider average bandwidth to reach not more than 100 KBit/s this would mean at least a whole minute of waiting until the opened page has been completely downloaded.

And to think that not that many years ago, I was thrilled to be able to do my web surfing via GPRS, and I didn't find the speed to be unacceptable.

Of course, those were the days when dialup Internet was still reasonably usable, too.

Website bloat sucks if you ask me - sites could be a lot smaller than they are and no less useful.