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

[ggking7]

Thank you very much for your response.

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

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.

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

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