Hello,

I am traveling to the San Francisco Bay area to visit family and friends in May. I bought a Samsung TRI BAND GPRS SGH-S300 in Bangkok, and want to know if I can purchase a sim card and pre-paid service through a provider in San Francisco? I understand that in the U.S they use a combination of the 850 MHz and 1900 MHz frequency bands. I can set my phone to 1900 Mhz.

What do I have to do to get service for two months when I go to the U.S.? Any advice or recommendations are greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

-O

Last time I was there, I bought a sim from Cingular. Worked fine in my unlocked tri-band. They also included a free motorola phone. Bought the sim at Radio Shack.

Edited March 14, 201016 yr by wimpy

Hi your phone should work just fine with either AT&T (previously Cingular) or T-Mobile. T-Mobile seems to have slightly more sensible offers, but worse reception. Coverage in the SF bay area is amazingly bad when compared to Thailand.

AT&T offers a pay as you go card. The advantage is that if you refill with $100, your SIM expires in 1 year. Good for the next trip, you can also refill online.

T-Mobile has no-commitment contracts which are good if you don't need to preserve your number, though overall you'll probably end up paying the same as prepaid on ATT. You sigh up and 2 months later, you quit again. In fact - if you go there, maybe you can find out if there's a way to keep the number, suspend it for a year or so. I am there every year and keeping the same number is very convenient.

ATT doesn't offer data with their paygo card anymore which is very annoying. Castrated my iPhone just when I needed it most (maps etc). For that reason I'll look into T-Mob next time.

PS: I also saw temporary SIMs at the airport. Would be interesting to know how they work and how much they cost. Might be a good option too. They were sold under some generic brand, but obviously they'd have to piggyback on either ATT's or T-Mobile's network.

Sorry came 2 times.

Edited March 14, 201016 yr by Beggar

When I was there last time I did the same as Wimpy - bought $50 for calls and got a great Samsung TriBand for free. Hard to get such a phone for this price in Thailand - free. This still works here in Thailand without problems.

What is important is the coverage of the network. I flew from NY to Nevada north and there was often a network dessert - but if there was a connection then the network was mostly busy...this even in Reno. So I had a phone but no working network.

Edited March 14, 201016 yr by Beggar

Thanks for the feed back..I will do more due diligence into finding out where to purchase a new sim without any contracts, and be able to add minuets with prepaid cards.

Go kindly,

-O

I will do more due diligence into finding out where to purchase a new sim without any contracts, and be able to add minuets with prepaid cards.

Go kindly,

-O

My $ 50 deal was no real contract. You buy a preloaded $ 50 sim and they wrap it into a free phone.