Temporary SIM card while visiting US

One provider that hasn’t been mentioned yet is FreedomPop. As far as I can tell, they don’t have any physical stores, so you would need an address that they can mail you a SIM card to (maybe whatever hotel / friend’s house your first stop is at?)

I just plugged in some phony (haha) information to see if it would come up with any options for addresses in downtown Salt Lake City — it worked and offered their Unlimited Talk/Text + 1GB Data SIM pack on a free one month trial ($20/month thereafter), so it could be completely free.

Disclaimer – I have ordered one of their free SIM packs myself, but I haven’t received it yet, so I have no idea what their coverage is like. But for $0, there’s really nothing to lose. Maybe check it out as a backup option?

One method that hasn’t been mentioned is SIM cards intended for travellers. One major example is ZipSIM which provides prepaid plans from $15 for 500MB of data.

Another is Good2GoMobile / US Travel (warning: their ssl certificate has expired.) They offer a Pay-as-you-go deal, and use the AT&T network. However, you can only buy their SIMs in stores rather than online.

There are numerous others like Roam Mobility, One SIMCard, WorldSIM, Similicious and TravelSIM. They all offer competitive deals which are worth it for short stays. You can find many of them on WillMyPhoneWork to check compatibility, and if they’re not on there they’re likely to be prepaid cards on major networks.

Disclaimer: I am not linked with any of the above companies. However I am planning to buy a ZipSIM in the future and am wondering if it’s worth it.

In the US, the only GSM networks (i.e. the only ones that will be compatible with your phone) are AT&T and T-Mobile. However there are a lot of MVNOs that operate on one of these two networks. AT&T has better coverage, and there’s an MVNO that uses AT&T’s network and offers affordable unlimited data ($40/mo, first 2.5 GB high-speed, pay for more high-speed if desired): Cricket Wireless.

willmyphonework.net is good for checking a phone’s compatibility with the various networks.

Suggestion: before departure, print out a list of the carriers your phone will work with. Hard copy is the way to go here — otherwise, you’ll find yourself (as I once did) standing in a Walmart, using your home provider’s expensive roaming to sort through the huge array of SIM choices on offer…

Cell provider employee here… I’m not gonna recommend our services, so I guess that makes this not a disclaimer? Also, edited as a result of noticing your link to your phone radios…

Your best bet for having coverage in the middle of nowhere in the United States is Verizon Wireless. Unfortunately, they are a CDMA provider, so if you wanted to go with them, you would need to purchase a compatible phone. This may be worth it for the places you’re traveling. (On a recent trip to Italy, I chose to buy a cheap phone compatible with local networks. It was $99 and I re-sold it for $75 afterwards.)

As others have mentioned, the two primary GSM providers in the US are AT&T and T-Mobile. They’ll likely have good coverage in cities and on major highways, but you’ll be unlikely to have coverage out in the middle of nowhere on back roads. The coverage maps on their websites will be helpful.

It appears your phone would get good coverage for talk/text/3g data on AT&T, but AT&T primarily uses the 700mhz band for LTE coverage, which your phone does not appear to support. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AT%26T_Mobility#Radio_frequency_summary)

It looks like your radios would be slightly more compatible with T-Mobile’s frequency bands. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-Mobile_US#Radio_frequency_spectrum_chart)

However, I’m not an engineer, and I don’t work for either of those companies, so your mileage may vary.

Whatever you do, I’d recommend sticking with one of the big carriers (Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T, or Sprint) or one of the brands/companies that resell service from the big carriers (Cricket, MetroPCS, etc.). There are some smaller carriers (US Cellular) that only have good coverage in certain areas – avoid these. Wikipedia should be your friend here.

As for your specific questions…

• Yes, you can definitely buy a SIM separately from a phone. Providers will charge you anywhere from $0 to $15 for this.
• Starting credit will not be included with a SIM. Usually, in the US, we just have a concept of a monthly plan. You’ll want to look for prepaid plans specifically. You can pay for one month with no credit check, and simply cancel before your next month of service.
• Yes, you can definitely get prepaid plans that include data.
• In the US, it’s most common for people to sign up for wireless service at the store of one of the major wireless providers. Any relatively large city is likely to have at least one store from each carrier, and you could probably get up and running in well under an hour. So, yes, you can walk in and walk out with a US phone number in a matter of minutes.
• Something around $30 is probably doable. T-Mobile offers a prepaid plan with unlimited talk & text, plus 3gb of LTE data for $40/month. https://prepaid-phones.t-mobile.com/prepaid-monthly-plans?icid=WMM_PD_SMPLYPRPD1_AAW88WBN93755 So, you could walk into a T-Mobile store, buy a SIM (you might be able to talk them into giving it to you for free), tell them you want to sign up for this plan, and be on your way.

Update about payment… I just did a quick Sales Chat with a T-Mobile representative. You do not need a US billing address in order to sign up for a prepaid plan, but you do need a US credit card. A prepaid VISA or AMEX card will suffice for this. I imagine other US carriers have similar policies, but I’ll let OP do the legwork on that. Chat contents below:

You: If I were to travel to the USA, and I had an unlocked,
compatible, GSM phone, would I be able to sign up for a prepaid or
pay-as-you-go T-Mobile plan?

Eldwin: Thank you for visiting T-Mobile
today! I would be happy to provide you with information regarding the
phones you can use with T-Mobile.

Eldwin: Yes, you can.

Eldwin: Our
SIM cards are a great option if you already have a phone and would
like to bring it to T-Mobile. Our only requirement is that your phone
is GSM-capable and Unlocked, so that you can start using T-Mobile
services.

You: Even without a US billing address or credit card?

Eldwin: You will need a valid US credit card to process and order
though.

You: I see.

You: There’s no way to pay my bill in store?

Eldwin: You can pay and order in store though.

You: OK. Would it work
to use a prepaid VISA debit card?

Eldwin: I recommend that you order
here online since it is easy and one less trip to make.

Eldwin: Yes,
it would word.

You: Great – and I wouldn’t need a US billing address?

Eldwin: Yes, that is correct.

You: Awesome, thank you!

Eldwin: You are
welcome. Have I answered all of your questions regarding our services?

You: Yes, thank you.

If your main goal is price, MetroPCS has no-contract, $30/month plans which have unlimited calling (US numbers), unlimited SMS, and “unlimited” data in the US (That is, 1GB of data up to LTE speeds, then unlimited throttled data, but I can never find solid information as to what the speeds are throttled to…)

For your requirement of international communication, you can add a $5/month service which has international SMS

For international calling, I would strongly suggest setting up Skype, Google Voice, WhatApp, or some other VoIP service. These will be much cheaper than any other option and, provided the mobile data works reasonably well from your phone, just as convenient as normal calls.

Unfortunately, the kicker here is your phone supports AT&T’s frequencies much better than T-Mobile’s (MetroPCS uses T-Mobile’s towers). The good news for you is T-Mobile has been expanding into the 1900 MHz band for years in order to make it easy for them to poach AT&T’s customers, so they actually have pretty good service on the 1900 MHz band. It’s been a long time since I researched it thoroughly, but word on the street (from a T-Mobile employee) is that where there is 1700MHz LTE, there is 1900 MHz 3G. My (T-Mobile) phone supports only 1700MHz LTE, so I can verify that both Salt Lake City and Las Vegas have 1700MHz LTE. Unfortunately, I can’t specifically remember if I had coverage on the freeway.

As for a place to buy the SIM card: I assume you are starting in Salt Lake City, since there is no other large airport in Utah. Gateway Mall, on 100 S and 400 W (Fair warning, the locals will refer to such an address as “first south fourth west”). As of last summer, this shop in Gateway Mall was closed for renovations, and I haven’t been back since. I would start there but, if they are closed, the Ranchero Mall on 900W and North Temple also has an authorized MetroPCS dealer.

Be careful with both of these shops, because the employee makes a commission off of sales… When we visited the Ranchero Market, my non-native-English-speaker, jet-lagged visitors were fast talked into a far more expensive plan than they needed :).

I can’t remember the exact price of a SIM card at the store, but I don’t remember it being terrible.

You may want to check your existing phone plan, for example quite a few providers in the UK offer free (Three) or cheap roaming with data included, this often has the benefit of roaming over multiple US providers giving you better coverage. Some providers even do this with Pay as you Go plans.

Last time I was in the USA I was flipping between Verizon and T-Mobile which ever offered better coverage. Although doing this calls home will be cheap, calls to US numbers will still be expensive, but we worked out it was cheaper than getting a US SIM.

On your phone it should cover most things but the big bands its missing is the 700mhz required for T-Mobile LTE and any form of CDMA (Verizon although they do have GSM bands as well). My phone (Lumia 930) didn’t have those either and I was still able to use it everywhere I wanted to but I found 3G fast enough.

Also make sure your phone is unlocked IE Not locked to your local phone provider.

If you decide to get a US sim, quite a few of them are available on eBay so you can buy and get it setup and tested before you leave so if you have to get your phone unlocked you can do it at home.

There are many options you can have as far as mobile phone/data prepaid plans are concerned.

Since you need coverage along the route between major metropolitan areas you may want to look at getting a plan from one of the major carriers directly like:

• AT&T GoPhone

or

• T-Mobile

There are other providers that you may be able to look at but they have pretty decent coverage in the metropolitan areas like LA or Las Vegas but may have problems outside cities.

The coverage maps area fairly accurate for both AT&T and T-Mobile so you can look at those.