USA SIM Card Recommedation

Heading off to the USA in the next couple of weeks.  Want to be able to use my mobile phone when I am in the US, mainly for data.  Anyway we are with O2 which is great for UK and Europe, but seriously expensive for the USA, even with their offers.  Does anyone have suggestions for a cheap (or less expensive) SIM card for the USA, even just a pay-as-you-go option.  We are heading to Atlanta and Tennessee, assuming the damage from the recent hurricane has not affected the trip too much!

can your phone take an e-sim? in which case airalo normally have a good range of reasonably priced data sims

Just been through this. Ended up with a 3 SIM. £10 for one month including 15gb of data.

They will post you a SIM for free or you can pick one up in Tesco or similar for 99p. You then register it and add some credit.

+1 for Esim

If your UK provider doesn’t have a reasonable add-on, as said, does your phone take dual esim? The esim from e.g. Airalo are data only (i.e. Whatsapp calling) and with dual the uk sim will take phone calls and SMS so need to turn roaming off if its expensive.

If you aren’t tied to a contract and don’t need to keep your number, Lebara do cheap payg with reasonable add-ons … 15 days, 5 GB data and 100 minutes of calls is £10.

“We are heading to Atlanta and Tennessee, assuming the damage from the recent hurricane has not affected the trip too much”

Yeah very genuinely you need to check that carefully. Anywhere in the Appalachian mountains north of Atlanta are still in major disaster recovery mode, major roads closed, minor roads destroyed, airlifting supplies. If it’s a city trip, that’s fine, but I would rearrange anything that looks like it might have been affected.

+1 Esim. Used Mayamobile with zero problems in NYC a couple of weeks ago

In my experience esim service providers like airalo are not as reliable as the normal network providers. I think they must have a quality of service agreement with the network providers where they have considerably lower priority than direct customers.

If it was only a day or two I would still use airalo as it is less faf, but for longer I would spend a little time to see what the possibility of getting an esim from the local network providers.

Used 3 for a 3 week holiday – worked well

On a recent trip to rural Washington, Oregon and Idaho, I used an Airalo eSim (data only) and Mrs Vlad used a “Jethro” physical Sim via Amazon (data + dedicated phone number for calls/SMS).

There was no meaningful difference in speed and quality of service though Mrs Vlad paid about three times what I paid for the eSim….(Her phone is too old for eSim)

I had access to AT&T and Verizon whereas she had access to both of those PLUS T-MOBILE networks

3 here as well, works ok, but there’s big areas where there’s little to no service, and you’ll have to use wifi.

really just a beware if you’re going to use your phone for navigation.

In terms of navigation and challenges of data, I just use the HereNow app on my phone, and download offline maps for the relevant bits of the US and use that unless car has satnav

3 SIM for  10/12/30 GB ‘data pack’ for one months worth of cheap data,  calls and texts 10-15 quid.  You can use so much of that data for calls and texts too.

Works well across many areas in the States. Used in new England/Florida/Colorado.

Bear in mind once you activate it – that’s when it starts.

3 sim quite often had no coverage in colorado and utah on a trip i  recently did, also your phone has to support Voice over LTE (VoLTE) over 4g to make calls, i had it in my old backup phone and could only use the data

i paid the extra to get roaming on my lebara pay as you go sim and that was pretty reliable all the time i was state side

We have previously used 3 with a payg and data add-on but have switched to Breeze e-sim for the current trip and it’s working perfectly so far. (Landed in USA last night so less than a day of testing so far mind).

The e-sim only gives us 2 networks and 3 was true roaming which may make a difference in some areas.

3 sim quite often had no coverage in colorado and utah on a trip i  recently did, also your phone has to support Voice over LTE (VoLTE

I did okay in Colorado with mine last year.

But then I guess it depends where you are.

I used Ubigi E sim for Japan and USA, worked well for me both times

I’d go for a PAYG 3 sim. Will cost you £15 but you will get calls/texts to and from the UK included in the package, instead of just data.

I used a Nomad e-Sim when we were in Canada this summer worked well.

That being said – having been caught up in the Jasper wildfires on that trip I would be checking with each accommodation provider that they’re still open (and don’t assume a lack of response means that they are) and seriously considering a change to your trip.

The area between Charlotte NC and Knoxville TN looks really bad and there is significant flooding in the Atlanta metro area.

Don’t suppose your broadband is with Virgin by any chance?

If it is then get them linked and get the O2 VOLT add-ons (free) which included roaming in USA.

We are flying out for 3 week MTB roadtrip through TN, NC and Virginia this weekend but now re-routed our trip West starting with biking in Bentonville.

I used Lebara recently for a trip to Canada (dual-SIM setup) and put £5 PAYG credit on it, and bought a £10 roaming data pack which lasted 2 weeks.  No issues at all.  If you download an offline map to Google maps before you go, even using it for in-car navigation doesn’t burn much data.  I had something like 5GB, 100 mins calls, 100 texts for that £10 pack.

I got a Tmobile USA one from amazon, I was to scared to try an e-sim last time so went for a physical one tucked in the back of my phone case, will do more reading on e-sims next time as plenty of choice.

Just came back from the US and I used simoptions, 5gb e-sim for $20 ish. Was on T-Mobile and pretty faultless and after 2 weeks I still had circa 2gb left on it even with poor wifi where I was staying.

This was on a pixel so check you can use an esim.

https://www.simoptions.com/esim-usa/?wpam_id=74

we are with O2 which is great for UK and Europe

On the subject of O2, we were just in Greece. Usually when you approach the roaming limit of 25Gb they send you warning SMS and then cut you off. This time we used WAY more than 25Gb and had no message from O2. I’m hoping that they messed up and I don’t get a massive bill, but next time I’ll be monitoring my usage more carefully and not risking it :-)