T-Mobile, Verizon, and AT&T in California
 

I have a T-Mobile SIM card and I love it. I'd like to set my girlfriend up with the same thing, but there is no T-Mobile store within 4 hours of where we live. Can we activate a new SIM without visiting a T-Mobile store?

There is an AT&T store here, but it looks like they charge $1/day to use their pre-paid service on top of per-minute charges.

There is a Verizon store here. How is their pre-paid service?

We recently moved and my T-Mobile card roams on "Edge Wireless" here, which is part of AT&T. Does that mean I'm paying $1/day to use my phone here?

You can order T-Mobile SIMs by mail from T-Mobile, or buy one pre-activated from eBay.

Verizon's prepaid service is very expensive, but PagePlus uses the same network and is very attractive if you don't need data access.

T-Mobile prepaid doesn't have any roaming charges, unless you're using Canadian or Mexican service.

Thank you very much for your response.

It looks like eBay has the SIM cards and activation codes available. When I was activated a year ago, a T-Mobile rep told me on the phone that it was necessary to visit a T-Mobile store to activate a SIM card.

It looks like Verizon and PagePlus are CDMA. I didn't even realize CDMA was available prepaid. We actually need GSM for travel.

None of these carriers supports foreign roaming (except for Canada and Mexico in some, but not all, cases)...

I should elaborate: on prepaid.