Need help - niece going to USA for 2 months

loopy_lou_5

Hi guys

My niece is going to the US for 2 months in 2 weeks time :sad: and my sis wants her to take a mobile with her (she has a triband).

As calls are expensive via mobile's does anyone know how to get the cheapest deal? Maybe she could buy an american sim???? I don't know??

Hope someone can help

Many thanks

alanclose

She could order a phone to be delivered to where she is going

This is $29.99 and you get $10 worth of airtime so about £13 taking of the free airtime

Edit

International rates are high with t-mobile

Virgin US has an international tariff and phones starting at $19.99

you need to make sure whatever sim you choose has coverage for where she is heading

tumbleweed261

I spent the last three summers working in the states for 3 months at a stretch (being nosy, but is she by any chance being a camp counsellor? If so I hope she loves it as much as I did) and I put 20 quid on my UK PAYG mobile for texting (my camp was quite remote so didn't have service most of the time) and used a pre-paid calling card for phoning home. One of my friends looked into it last summer and got an amazing deal with Verizon which was apparantly quite cheap running-costs wise and he got a phone included.

Forgot to say: I had my phone unlocked before I went to live in Canada and purchased a cheap sim card there, which saved me a fortune, but again for long calls home I went with calling cards - good luck deciding!

Martini

For the USA only:
http://www.gosim.com/index.php?page=usa

Or also for future holidays:
http://www.gosim.com/index.php?page=3725_global_sim

Others are available. Just Google Roaming SIM.

Make sure the phone is unlocked before she goes. Help is available on these Forums.

diamonds

T-mobile prepaid @ https://www.T-mobile.com, you can call her 5p per connection @ 0.00per minute here http://www.teletop.co.uk/index2.php

or half a pence a minute via 18185 via BT landline

grownupgirly

I just spent time there. Came back last week. The thing about USA mobile phones is that you pay for both making AND receiving phone calls. That really sucks! So... what I did, is I bought an internet based 'calling card' (a virtual calling card) from https://www.pingo.com and called from a landline with that. The rates for calling UK from USA are incredible, about a penny a minute, I think. MUCH cheaper than using a mobile. Good luck, and I hope this helps. Oh, by the way, I still have about 5 dollars left on mine. Maybe we could arrange a private chat thingy (Not sure how to) and I can give you the calling card numbers she'd need on my calling card. That way she can have at least 5 dollars worth for free. 5 dollars worth lasted me about a month, but obviously it depends on how much you use it!

Hope this helps?
Grownupgirly.

superjaggybunnet

I would recommend one of the phone cards mentioned somewhere in a post above. These are by far the cheapest method. A mobile is not a good idea unless you want a monster bill.

My son went to the States last year and was under instructions to not use his mobile except for the odd text message to let us know how he was getting on. Doh! His bill was in the hundreds of pounds as he used it to call home to his girlfriend and other pals. Idiot!

My daughter was in Las Vegas at the weekend and got one of these cards that gave her 200 minutes of calls. Not sure how much it cost but it was cheap she said!

tumbleweed261

My phone cards were from USPS and cost $20 for 200 mins I think, much better than a massive phone bill!

gulife

I went to the states last year for a good 3 months, and used my UK T-Mobile contract phone. T-Mobile have voice and text bundles that can be used on any of their partner networks, ie:

Voice 55min (£25 one-off fee)
or
Voice 30min (£15 one-off fee)

(these can be used for calling and receiving)

as well as text options which are quite cheap! My bills were quite low!

http://www.t-mobile.co.uk/personal/our-services/going-abroad/bundles.do


Failing that, I also have a tracfone (as i go back to the states quite often) which is pretty cheap (its registered to the zip code you are closest too, so calls are cheaper), https://www.tracfone.com, and you can make cheap international calls on the handset, with the international options. Unfortunately, you can't receive incoming international calls tho.

redux

gulife wrote: »

I went to the states last year for a good 3 months, and used my UK T-Mobile contract phone. T-Mobile have voice and text bundles that can be used on any of their partner networks, ie:

But 50 pence a minute is still quite a bit more than local SIM card rates from 10 cents

loopy_lou_5

Thanks guys for all your comments, I will pass all this info to my sis . . .

Yes tumbleweed261 she is going to summer camp and won't be back until end August. . . . she is spending some time in New York after camp! lucky thing.

Hopefully she will now not have an excuse keeping in touch with us.

Thanks again x