USA local SIM card

Hi All,

sorry for possible off-topic, I really did not know where to ask this.

I'm going to visit USA for two weeks. I want to buy a local prepaid SIM
card mostly for IP access.

Is it possible in USA to buy a prepaid SIM as a visitor, without long
term contract?

I need a public (can be dynamic) IP address, NOT over NAT, and (or)
IPv6, if possible.

My phone is GSM UMTS 3G.

Expected traffic volume is about 10G.

Will use it in New York City and Orlando City, not in rural areas.

Good data roaming tariff in Cannada will be a big advantage.

What can you advice?

Thank you!

Look at TMobile, they provide IPv6 public addressing, and offer relatively
cheap prepaid plans.

Walmart has the prepaid no contract Straight Talk plans that can be on VZW, T-Mobile, or AT&T. Grab a BYOD kit either from a Walmart store or order online.

I keep a mobile hotspot deactivated and ready to add a service plan to for my customers if they have an outage.

Ting isn’t too bad either for pricing but can’t speak to service quality but we have a few people that use them and haven’t heard much complaints.

https://ting.com/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMInKW-mOKs1gIVglqGCh2CvQcDEAAYASAAEgLVSPD_BwE

Many of the MVNOs don’t work well if you wander to the more remote parts of the US.

I’ve used ultra.me before with good luck.

Jared Mauch

Hi All,

sorry for possible off-topic, I really did not know where to ask this.

I'm going to visit USA for two weeks. I want to buy a local prepaid SIM
card mostly for IP access.

Is it possible in USA to buy a prepaid SIM as a visitor, without long
term contract?

I need a public (can be dynamic) IP address, NOT over NAT, and (or)
IPv6, if possible.

My phone is GSM UMTS 3G.

Expected traffic volume is about 10G.

Will use it in New York City and Orlando City, not in rural areas.

Good data roaming tariff in Cannada will be a big advantage.

What can you advice?

Includes public ipv6

But here in the USA we UMTS is much poorer experience relative to LTE, you
can get a decent LTE unlocked phone for around $100

Prepaid plans generally wont include roaming to canada

GoogleFi

https://fi.google.com/about/

Google Fi is great and all, however right now you're limited to only being
able to use 3 models of phone on the network, wouldn't recommended that for
an overseas traveler.

I'm using KnowRoaming in Europe. Didn't used it in the States yet but in
Canada, I was on Bell LTE network. Pretty sure it's behind NAT though (it
is on KPN in NL anyway).

Eh, kinda, but not really....

https://ios.gadgethacks.com/how-to/set-up-googles-project-fi-your-iphone-0174991/

I used ProjectFi SIMs in my iphone and also in my Peplink LTE routers. Not as fast as VZW but they work.

-Mike

AT&T's $45 prepaid pans and its more expemsive sibbling (I think $65)
allow over 6GB of data at LTE speeds, and the rest is unlimited but at
2G speeds (I think).

The AT&T plans at the $45 and higher levels allows data and voice
roaming into Canada, as long as your usage in Canada represents less
than 50% of total use.

The AT&T plan allows you to remove video throttling (the T-Mobile plan
doesn't and has more severe net neutrality violations).

If you obtain a SIM card from eBay, there is a hard to find web access
to set it up (normal AT&T web site forces you to buy a SIM card which
AT&T won't deliver outside of USA).

https://www.att.com/prepaid/activations/#/activate.html

In my case, I choose AT&T because I tested T-Mobile a few years ago
along the route taken and found too many areas without service,
interestingly, one area where in 1998-1999, I had service with Omnipoint
on a 1900 only phone (Fort Edward NY).

Note on T-Mobile: its coverage map expects you to be on postpaid plans
which includes areas where you're allowed to roam on AT&T, but not
necessarily if on prepaid, so hard to tell if you will really get
service based on its maps.

Also note: AT&T on an iPhone gets to disable the "manual" seach for
available carriers, so you can't test in a town if T-Mobile would also
be available. You can insert you own SIM card just to scan for networks
and with roaming disbaled, you won't encurr any charges by home carrier.

BTW, AT&T's prefered roaming partner in Canada is Rogers.

In other words, if you have an AT&T SIM card, it will try to log in
first via Rogers. I assume it also roams with Bell/Telus as second
choices but have not been able to test it.

Addituinal notes:

When setting up AT&T prepaid, at one point you need to insert the SIM
into your handset in order to receive a confirmation code (your login
password).

I know this process works while the handset is in Canada. Even though
service is not yet activated on this SIM, the SIM can still receive SMS
from AT&T via the Rogers network. I *assume* this would work from other
countries as well but can't garantee. Rogers and AT&T tend to have
fairly compatible and very "connected" systems for roaming as AT&T
Wireless(original company) used to own a big chunk of Rogers Wireless.

(this step is required for you to login to your new account, deposit
funds via credit card and choose your package).

Nice advertising, thank you! =)

But still have open some questions I asked before:

1. My phone is not LTE but 3G GSM/UMTS capable (all bands,
850/900/1700/1900/2100). Will it work? Is 3G coverage good enough in New
York and Orlando for VoIP calls (SIP, Viber, Skype)?

2. Is there public or private IP address? IPv6?

If you are talking about Orlando/Central Florida (or anywhere in FL) now or in next couple of weeks be advised that coverage is still spotty for both voice and data due to the hurricane.

1. My phone is not LTE but 3G GSM/UMTS capable (all bands,
850/900/1700/1900/2100). Will it work? Is 3G coverage good enough in New
York and Orlando for VoIP calls (SIP, Viber, Skype)?

3G coverage is a superset of LTE coverage. (aka: carriers still have
some areas that have 3G but not LTE).

AT&T has 850 and 1900 in 3G. the AWS (1700/2100) is for LTE only.
AT&T has shutdown 2G, but T-Mobile still has it.

In Canada, Rogers still has 2G, but Bell/Telus never had 2G. (they went
from CDMA to 3G circa 2010).

T-Mobile does not have 850. It has AWS (1700/2100) and 1900 in the above
list. Originally, it had 1900 only (2G). When it acquired 1700, it
deployed 3G on it. But because the big US carriers deemed 1700 to be for
LTE once it arrived, very few handset manufacturers provided support for
3G on 1700, especially during the days when handsets coudl only support
3 or 4 frequencies. Many of the hansets custom ordered by T-Mobile and
the 3 small new Canadian carriers replaced 1900 support in 3G with 1700
support. (so when Rogers got the Mobilicity customers, many of them had
handsets that could not support 3G services in 1900 so Rogers had to get
a package to upgrade those customers).

T-Mobile has subsequently refarmed 1700 to support LTE, and split its
1900 to support 2G and 3G. It has since acquired some 700 for LTE
service, but this is no help to you. However, as a 3G-only user on
t-mobile, you are limited to 1900 which has shorter propagation from
antennas. So consider that the T-Mobile coverage maps may be built with
700mhz propagation in mind, so you would not get as much coverage on a
1900 only sertvice. There may still be areas where 3G is on 1700, but
propagation is similar to 1900. (assuming your handset can support 3G on
AWS (1700/2100).

Note that AWS (1700/2100) is not used outside North America, even if
frequemncies such as 2100 are. Carefully check your handset's specs.

2. Is there public or private IP address? IPv6?

I can't answer this. During my bike trip, I choose AT&T because it is
the service which cuases me the least amount of waiting to post a tweet
or check emails. Getting the IP address on an iPhone isn't easy so I
didn't waste any time doing this.

Nice advertising, thank you! =)

But still have open some questions I asked before:

1. My phone is not LTE but 3G GSM/UMTS capable (all bands,
850/900/1700/1900/2100). Will it work? Is 3G coverage good enough in New
York and Orlando for VoIP calls (SIP, Viber, Skype)?

This limits you to using either T-Mobile or AT&T since they're the only nationwide carriers using GSM/UMTS.

T-Mobile's network on GSM for data is garbage, but they've got UMTS deployed in many areas, however, there are areas which only have GSM and LTE service. Those are more likely to be areas where they never added UMTS but did add LTE when they started on their LTE deployment 3 or so years ago. I haven't kept up with where UMTS is deployed these days on T-Mobile but it's either AWS-band (1700/2100 MHz) or PCS-band (1900 MHz). Their coverage has gotten a lot better, but that's primarily in LTE deployed areas. I don't think they're doing much to expand their UMTS footprint.

AT&T is going to be similar but I'm less familiar with their network and can't speak on it as much.

Latency will be higher on UMTS but you can still use VoIP services, but perhaps with some additional audio dropouts. Your mileage may vary.

2. Is there public or private IP address? IPv6?

With standard service, I'm not sure if they support inbound connections to the phones or not. I've never tried. I suppose that could be worked around with a VPN. I believe that IPv4 is run through NAT but IPv6 might be a public IP. Again, I haven't tried to access a network this way over cellular.

Best,
Ryan Wilkins

I cannot think of any prepaid plans in the U.S. that meet all of your requirements, though I am far from being familiar with all of them.

Here is what I (think I) "know", though I would love to be set straight on anything I got wrong or missed:

Generally 3G is available wherever LTE is. Between the national GSM/UMTS carriers, AT&T generally has better coverage than T-Mobile does outside of metropolitan areas, so if you are traveling a lot between metros in something other than an aircraft then this is something to consider (though it doesn't sound like this would likely be an issue for you). In some areas, AT&T and T-Mobile might allow you to roam between their networks, but I believe this is pretty rare (esp. on prepaid), so you should plan on being forced to make a decision to be on one network or the other, and just be satisfied with the native coverage of whatever network you pick.

The larger issue for you with T-Mobile might be their previous (and ongoing?) use of AWS bands (split 1700MHz uplink/2100 downlink) for 3G service, which very few phones sold outside of the U.S. support. They have been working nationwide to reallocate their AWS licenses to LTE, turn off 2G service on PCS (1900MHz) bands, and move the 3G service to PCS, but my understanding is that it has been taking them a while to complete this migration and I do not know the status of it in any given market.

If you are planning to bring your own phone, then don't bother with Verizon or Sprint...not only are they generally hostile to "bring your own phone", but their 3G coverage consists of SIMless EVDO with a fallback to CDMA/1xRTT for voice, NOT GSM/UMTS. Your phone most certainly will not support this.

Very very few (if any) prepaid plans, either from the carriers themselves or MVNOs, have roaming in Canada (data or otherwise) built-in to the "plan". You will likely have to buy a separate SIM+plan while you are up there. I have zero knowledge about what the Canadian wireless market looks like so cannot help you there unfortunately.

I can also think of exactly zero prepaid offering by either AT&T or T-Mobile that give you non-NAT IPv4 access. As others have said, T-Mobile does offer native v6 (dual-stacked with NATted v4), which of course would not be NAT. If you need publicly-reachable IPv4 you might consider VPNing to an access concentrator that will hand you such an IP when you need it...I happen to know that L2TP+IPsec w/ NAT Traversal happens to work over v4 on most AT&T prepaid plans and the plans of their MVNOs.

One popular MVNO here is Straight Talk, a sub-brand of America Movil. They will only sell in blocks of 30 days minimum, but you can get 8GB over 30 days for USD $45 or 12GB for $55. If you exhaust your data allocation then it doesn't cut you off, just throttles you down massively. But if you do exhaust and want full-speed back, you can choose to waive whatever remaining days you have left of the 30 you initially bought and immediately refill your SIM with another 8 or 12GB purchase, which starts the 30 day clock over. The only way to get a SIM in person instead of by mail-order is to buy one of their activation kits at retail from a Wal-Mart store...I believe they are USD $60 and it includes SIMs both for the AT&T and T-Mobile networks (you must choose only one at time of activation) plus a $45 8GB service card (so the SIMs themselves really only cost $15). Unfortunately, if you want the 12GB service plan, other than ordering just a SIM from straighttalk.com and having it shipped to a friend in the States ahead of your travels, I don't know of any way to accomplish that while also being able to avoid paying for the 8GB service card that is included with the retail kit.

If you shop for other MVNOs, be very careful to get clarification on what carrier's network they use before you fork over any cash. Many of them only offer access to one carrier, and if that carrier happens to be Sprint or Verizon then no way will it work for you (and there are an awful lot of Sprint-only MVNOs in particular). Just because a certain vendor offers a SIM card doesn't mean it is for a compatible network...Sprint and Verizon use SIM cards for access to their LTE networks.

One (admittedly more fiddly) option you may want to consider, which would allow you to use whatever carrier you wanted without needing to be concerned about the underlying network technology or support for particular bands, would be to look into either purchasing a cheap "MiFi"-like device, or see if one of the providers will rent one to you for the duration of your visit. Then you could jump on, say, Verizon's LTE network with the MiFi and have your phone talk to the MiFi with WiFi. You said you were likely to use VoIP for voice communication anyway so not having a SIM in your phone doesn't sound like it would be a problem. (This may not solve your Canada problem, though...you'd still likely have to work out a separate solution for any time spent up there.)

Hope this helps,

I'm going to visit USA for two weeks. I want to buy a local prepaid SIM
card mostly for IP access.

I use these guys when I fly through the US. Can't say who the carrier(s) they might use. Can't say if there was a non-natted address. But I think IPv6 was supplied.

https://roammobility.com/ You can mail order the SIM and top it up on demand.

Is it possible in USA to buy a prepaid SIM as a visitor, without long
term contract?

Can activate from a day to a month.

I need a public (can be dynamic) IP address, NOT over NAT, and (or)
IPv6, if possible.

My phone is GSM UMTS 3G.

Expected traffic volume is about 10G.

the 1 month plan about covers that.

Will use it in New York City and Orlando City, not in rural areas.

I had no problems at the Newark airport as I passed through.

Good data roaming tariff in Cannada will be a big advantage.

The same guys do something in Canada. I used them for 14 days earlier this year and roamed from the prairies of Alberta through into the Rockies without nary a hiccup. Whether there be a static ip address assigned... don't know. Can't recall if they used Bell or Telus or Rogers.

https://roammobility.ca/ This one is different, this is a one-time use SIM.

The larger issue for you with T-Mobile might be their previous (and ongoing?) use of AWS bands (split 1700MHz uplink/2100 downlink) for 3G service, which very few phones sold outside of the U.S. support. They have been working nationwide to reallocate their AWS licenses to LTE, turn off 2G service on PCS (1900MHz) bands,

T-Mobile isn't shutting down its 2G for now. AT&T did and T-Mobile hoped
to get IoT business for people whose devices are stuck on 2G. (Think
parking meters etc).

However, T-Mobile carved a big chunk of its 1900s to support 3G
(UMTS/HSPA+) leaving little for 2G.

Very very few (if any) prepaid plans, either from the carriers themselves or MVNOs, have roaming in Canada

AT&T's prepaid plans at $45 and $65 provide full roaming into Canada for
voice and Data, using your US "bucket". The one at $30 and the daily
"pay as you go" don't.

T-Mobile prepaid has roaming in Canada for its $75 plan, as well as it
$45/$55 plans with a $5 surcharge.

because AT&T and T-Mo have reciprocal roaming with the Canadian
carriers, they can afford to offer roaming because it costs them next to
nothing. MVNOs would have to pay higher roaming fees so less likely to
include roaming in Canada.

If you shop for other MVNOs, be very careful to get clarification on what carrier's network they use before you>fork over any cash.

Sprit is very common for MVNOs which means you can't use it with a
standard handset.