mobile phone charges in USA

tonys_3

My son is in San Francisco till early October [lucky chap].When I phone him on his mobile,he gets charged by the US phone company in addition to me being charged from this end.
Is there a way round this eg him buying a sim card there?Failing that,what is the cheapest alternative,and does anyone know how much the US compaany charge?

Browntoa

he is better off buying a local sim card but he may need to get his phone Unlocked to put the other sim in it, if it is a Nokia this is easy but a lot of other phones need cable unlocks so he would need to find a shop to o it

with a local sim card he would not have to pay the roaming fee you are on about !!

I belive Virgin have a USA arm now

pin

One thing about the USA, which your son will need to check, is that even local providers (i.e. if he got a local SIM) still have to pay for incoming calls. However this normally comes out of incoming calls. Here is a list of all the US mobile operators (GSM), however not only a few will operate in San Fransisco:

http://www.gsmworld.com/roaming/gsminfo/cou_us.shtml

Sorry I can't find a list of just San Franisco operators at present. Also note the USA has several different mobile technologies apart from GSM (which is what we have here).

dc

Tony, if he is using his UK service and roaming, then he could be paying anything between 45p and £1.30 a minute to receive calls. Depends who he is with and whether they have an "international calling plan" (eg O2 is £1.27p a min to receive calls normally, but with up front payment of £2.99 a month it drops to 45p, still expensive) Orange is 65p whatever.

The US mobile numbers have the same area code as fixed telephones so to differentiate the mobile, (sorry) cellphone company charges to recieve calls, as unlike the UK, it is the same price to call a cellphone or a landline from a normal fixed/static phone.
As Pin says, received calls are charged by using up contract or pre-pay minutes.

My son is in Chicago and uses T-mobile, Well served, east of Sierra Nevada and Canada, but from some coverage maps dont seem to have cracked California yet, AT&T/Cingular are the biggest.

ADDED, Whoops here is Tmobile coverage, must have been looking at old maps, http://www.t-mobile.com/coverage/Default.asp.

And PAYG details http://www.t-mobile.com/plans/default.asp?tab=payasyougo

dc

tonys_3

Many thanks to the three of you for the info and your speed of reply I do appreciate it.Spoke to him ten minutes ago and he knows where the T mobile place is in town.
Hopefully it will save him a lot of money.