mobile phones

[Floridalover]

Or you could upgrade your phone to a tri-band model and your O2 service will work. Mine is O2 and I am here at the moment...its no problem. Just bear in mind its about a pound per minute to call home so if you just want to call home occasionally you would probably be better to get a phone card as Ana says.

[pieman6]

Ive got a Triband but dont want to use my Vodafone sim card. Can you buy a American simcard to place in your phone to make cheaper phones calls in the USA? If so where do you get them from and is it PAYG?

[amy]

One other thing to bear in mind contrated phones come as standard with an internationl call barring block in place.You will have to contact your air time provider to have this removed before you travel.Another thing to remember is that you will also be paying to receive incoming calls for the international part of the call.
I see you are with o2, they do an international traveller pack, free if you are on a premium call package and £2.99 a month if you are not,you can by it for one month to cover whilst you are out there and it makes the calls a lot cheaper.

[Ian Dee]

Its not called Pay as you go in USA, they did not know what I was talking about, but I forget what it was called.
Never seen the Walmart cheap ones.
I enquired at Tandyys or caddy Shack and they were $99.
main dif in US is that PAYG or whatever has a time limit, so if you dont top up withing so many dyas???45, you loose the credit and have to rejoin when you next go back.
I tried Tri-band but it got stolen!!
good job really as they are very expensive to call UK and I also think the recipient also gets charged.
For use in US one of their PAYG would be best. However, its a big place and you have to find out if you wnat only Florida - if you want to 'roam' in US from Florida its another bit to add on.

[SunLover]

We bought a Cingular pre paid package a year or so ago in the States. Cost $79 and came with $30 worth of calls.

You can top up your airtime as you need it, and they also have rollover minutes. As long as you keep topping up your account every 90 days, your minutes are stored until you next use the phone. We top up from the UK and then when we arrive, we switch on our cell phone and know that we have loads of prepaid airtime.

[Ian Dee]

Chris & Peter
good
Where did you get the Cingular?
I did not realise you could top up from UK. The fact that loosing the minutes if not topped up and the cost of re-registering, was the turn off (pardon the pun!)
Is it limited to Florida - I assume thats cheaper and all we need?[?]

[Fozzie]

<blockquote id="quote" class="ffs">quote:Originally posted by pieman6
Ive got a Triband but dont want to use my Vodafone sim card. Can you buy a American simcard to place in your phone to make cheaper phones calls in the USA? If so where do you get them from and is it PAYG?
[/quote]
You can get a T-Mobile sim card that uses the european GSM format (still need tri-band though), its just a pay as you go system and you pay for airtime i.e. if you receive a call you will use up minutes as well.

I got one from Beepers & Phones on the 192 heading east of the Walmart, I think they are in some of the malls as well. - The sim was around $30 and then you just buy top up cards for minutes they come in 25/50 & 100 formats which gives 100, 250 & 650 mins. At the moment the minutes wont expire for 12 months rather than the normal 60 days, so you can always use them next year!.

Its a close call on price whether its cheaper to buy a new phone and as someone mentioned you can get them from Walmart : both Virgin and Tracfone do them, I just didnt want another phone in the house and have to go through buying all the accessories again.[msnscared]