Cellphones from Thailand/Asia work well in US, or throw it away?

[labik]

Have two handphones I bought here in Asia, standard SIM card we all know about. Will they work extensively in the US, I mean should I take them back with me, or do US cellphone companies not accept them? Or, do US phone companies all but insist you buy their phones in a package, unlike the "freedom" here in Asia?

[noise]

We took our Thailand bought cell phone back and, to be specific, went to T-mobile and used their sim card with no problem. Bought an unlimited one month program for about $50 that covered all our travels.

[lomatopo]

As long as your phones are unlocked, accept SIMs and support GSM 1900 MHz, you can use your phone in the U.S.A. It has been like this for ~ 15 years or so; not sure why you seem confuddled.

You can use pre-paid services on AT&T or T-Mobile in the U.S.A., either directly or via one of their many, many, many resellers.

The U.S.A. is a very large country so not all geographic areas are covered with T-Mo or AT&T, but I'd venture to say that the top 200 markets are covered by one or both.

Plenty of "freedom".

Edited August 6, 2013 by lomatopo

[Cheapcharly]

Worked for me on at& t.

I think u can get 3g internet in usa .never tried. But just calling is OK with eu or thai phone.

Edited August 7, 2013 by Cheapcharly

[steelepulse]

I just got back from the US and bought a t-mobile sim card and their $2.00/day unlimited package for my Chinese smart phone I use here. Only downside is that their 3g both 1700 and 2100, so if you phone does not support 1700 you only get edge speeds. Thai sim cards also work fine there, but I would imagine you'd have some hefty roaming charges once back in Thailand. We'll see as Mrs SP used her Thai phone often for business, but she said if a thai user calls her it's "only 20 baht"/minutes vs calling Thailand at 50 baht/minute.

[lomatopo]

T-Mo's $2/day plan is limited to EDGE. T-Mo has a $3/day plan which does include 3G. T-Mo operates 3G on AWS (which uses a unique frequency set: 1700 MHz for the uplink and 2100 MHz for the downlink) which most/nearly all phones do NOT support. T-Mo has also re-farmed 1900 MHz in some/many metropolitan areas, and most phones do support 1900 MHz 3G. I use 1900 MHz 3G from T-Mo in San Francisco, Chicago, NYC, Wash DC and Boston.

Roaming charges vary by service provider, and roaming partner: check with DTAC, AIS and/or TrueMove but you do pay for incoming calls so if a Thai person dials your Thai number (08x-nnn-NNNN) they will pay their local fee, ~ 1 baht/min, and you, in the U.S. will also pay ~ 45 - 95 baht/min, for any incoming or outgoing call. Hopefully Mrs. SP's business calls are able to be expensed.

In the U.S., you pay for both incoming and outgoing calls.

http://www.dtac.co.th/en/postpaid/services/roaming/roaming-promotion.html

For longer stays a 30 day plan from T-Mo, or StraightTalk/SImple - which resell both AT&T and T-Mo, et al., might be a better option?

[Sam Drucker]

In the USA now, for an extended period. I have a Samsung Galaxy Note II (GT-N7100) I bought in Thailand last December.

AT&T works on it, but they are expensive. I had been on T-Mobile, but it did a few strange things with the phone:

1) The phone was always showing the "R" symbol, indicating that it was roaming when it really wasn't.

2) Even though I'm in the heart of a major metro area, it was dropping back to EDGE at home and in other areas. Annoyingly, when I went into the T-Mobile office, it picked up 3G fine there.

I started reading up on "Straight Talk" from Walmart and their BYOP (Bring Your Own Phone) service. They are a mobile virtual network operator (a reseller or "MVNO") and resell services from the major players (like T-Mo, AT&T, and Verizon) at a discount. I haven't read up on this since about March. But at that time, I learned that you could choose different SIM card packages that corresponded to the different network providers for $45/month. Unlimited voice, text, and data. For AT&T, that was about half of what I was pricing their services at by going with them directly. However, back in January Straight Talk had stopped selling the AT&T SIM cards, effectively stopping sales to new customers. Straight Talk did continue to set up new services for customers with the AT&T SIMS.

Apparently, people in the know went out to Walmarts early this year and started buying up the AT&T SIMS, then reselling them on EBay at a profit. The SIM packages originally sold for about $15 as I understand. I think I paid about $55 for mine back in March. Even at that price, it paid for itself in about 1-2 months, compared to going to AT&T direct. The AT&T network seems to be best for me; none of the major issues I had with the T-Mobile network mentioned earlier.

Caveats? I can't seem to get SMS confirmations to work, and StraightTalk support made it clear they could not/would not support issues like this with a handset they didn't sell. Also, I can't send international SMS's (you have to buy their international package at $60/month to do that.) It didn't seem worth it to upgrade my package for the occasional times I needed it for people that weren't on What'sApp, Line, etc.

Straight Talk is very easy about porting my existing phone number over to them. They're not perfect, but overall, I think it is the best option I have for now.

[lomatopo]

^ You can still buy/order an AT&T-compatible SIM directly from Straight-Talk for $14.99. Also, there are a gazillion other AT&T MVNOs. Agree that you'll potentially get more/better 3G coverage with AT&T on 850 or 1900.

Some Thai mobile service providers allow you to originate SMSes via a web interface, at your normal fee, ~ 1 baht/per, so if you have to send SMSes to/within Thailand one can use that feature. You can also leave your Thai SIM in a 2nd handset to monitor incoming SMSes and missed calls and then return those via other lower-cost means. You can also buy bulk SMS services linked to email and phones, which are easy to sue and reliable.

Edited August 14, 2013 by lomatopo

[Sam Drucker]

Interesting. Don't know when AT&T came back to Straight Talk, but they were no longer available around March-April, and people had been talking about it for a while.

[lomatopo]

Interesting. Don't know when AT&T came back to Straight Talk, but they were no longer available around March-April, and people had been talking about it for a while.

Not sure. Could have been based on any number of things: capacity, re-evaluating WalMart as a channel partner. WalMart ran out of AT&T-compatible SIMs. The WalMart site shows the AT&T SIM for $14.99 is out of stock until 8/21/13.

Are you getting 3G, on 850 or 1900, from AT&T? How is the speed? Can you get a feel for any FuP cap, in GB or speed? Can you share the approx. geographical area?

As more people move up to LTE there is more capacity for GSM/3G customers on AT&T or T-Mo's networks. Both have a ton of MVNO's/resellers other than StraightTalk (which is part of TracFone, which also resells CDMA services on Sprint/Verizon).

[Sam Drucker]

Interesting. Don't know when AT&T came back to Straight Talk, but they were no longer available around March-April, and people had been talking about it for a while.

Not sure. Could have been based on any number of things: capacity, re-evaluating WalMart as a channel partner. WalMart ran out of AT&T-compatible SIMs. The WalMart site shows the AT&T SIM for $14.99 is out of stock until 8/21/13.

Are you getting 3G, on 850 or 1900, from AT&T? How is the speed? Can you get a feel for any FuP cap, in GB or speed? Can you share the approx. geographical area?

As more people move up to LTE there is more capacity for GSM/3G customers on AT&T or T-Mo's networks. Both have a ton of MVNO's/resellers other than StraightTalk (which is part of TracFone, which also resells CDMA services on Sprint/Verizon).

Sorry for my late reply.

Are you getting 3G, on 850 or 1900, from AT&T?

Actually, I don't know! How do you tell what frequency you're on? I am seeing the indicator mostly on H+, toggling sometimes to H and to 3G.

How is the speed?

Another interesting question. I have run both Speed Test and Speed Test.Net (with WiFi turned off.) I am unable to get either app to show me a download speed. They both throw errors for that portion. Both do show uploads of about 1 Mb/s. I have no issues with download speeds on the network. And both apps work properly when I'm running WiFi.

Can you get a feel for any FuP cap, in GB or speed?

I have never hit it, nor even come close. Straight Talk has a ToS that spells out no-no's like streaming and other high-usage practices. I read up on it months ago, but nothing recent. Sounds like maybe you get a warning shot across the bow based on your usage patterns (like streaming videos) more than for hitting a specific quantity of data.

They also say no tethering of other devices, though I'm curious if they could even tell? Is there a way they can do that? And if I tethered a tablet to my phone, but didn't do any extreme bandwidth-consuming actions, would they know? Might have to try that.

Can you share the approx. geographical area?

Tampa Bay, Florida

[Pib]

This Wikipedia article shows which U.S. carriers are CDMA or GSM, which should help a person to determine if their GSM phone they bought or plan to buy in Thailand will work on carrier XYZ's network in the U.S.

[lomatopo]

Some people report a 2 GB FuP with StraightTalk.

AT&T appears to have total coverage for 3G in the Tampa/St. Pete metro area. Believe it is on 850 MHz. Further think that T-Mo re-farmed AT&T's 1900 MHz in the Tampa area for 3G.

AT&T charges extra for tethering, and they can determine that you are using it. Believe they can determine you are using tethering by examining your multiple MAC addresses.