US Roaming

Our man in Havana

Am I correct that o2 is the only company allowing pre paid roaming in the united states at the moment?

By prepaid do you mean pay as you go?

I can confirm that vodafone ready to go will acquire a network in the states and receive texts but wont send them

Meteor,O2 and Vodafone contract/Bill phones will do everything there ie make/receive calls + send and receive texts

stereo_steve

Meteor is the only prepaid network that officially supports roaming outside europe.

In fact if you have a prepaid phone, there is very little reason not to be with them....except maybe for the fact eircom now own them

Our man in Havana

Does o2 not support us roaming on pay as you go?

BuffyBot

O2 don't seem to mention it on their site anymore, but they have told me they do.

PS stereo: eircom don't own Meteor...yet

SoBe

if its ony help im on o2 speak easy.im just back from 3 months in the states and my o2 phone had no problems making calls and texts or recieving calls and texts while i was in chicago

Our man in Havana

Thanks for the information.

120_Minutes

O2 recommend you choose AT&T wireless when you roam in the states, prepaid or pay monthly.

kmart6

Dont forget that your phone has to be tri-band to work in the states!!!

BuffyBot

120_Minutes wrote:

O2 recommend you choose AT&T wireless when you roam in the states, prepaid or pay monthly.

AT&T Wireless is now Cingular, as an FYI to anyone who might get that showing on their phone display.

detritus

If you are visiting the US and your operator supports roaming. if you cant borrow a tri band phone you could consider renting...

http://www.cellhire.com/networkpartners/

They even have options to rent a phone with a sim card with calls on a local network although the rates could work out pretty expensive.

sirlinux

You actually need a quad band for best coverage, over there recently and there is more and more 850 cells as well as 1900 ones, a motorola v5xx will do the job.

Ruu_Old

If your on O2, it still shows up as AT&T, i still have mine here. Its the only network that you will have access to from O2 pre paid, try and select another one and it wont allow you. I could never make a call even doing the *123* thing but can send and receive texts, good luck

Dellas

Was in Florida a while back and New York could recieve texts ok on tri band phone but couldnt send them. I got a call from a mate and wondered how it was possible and what was I being charged for!!! I got back and checked my balance on ready to go and I had not been charged for it !!! Must have been a fluke...

Sparky

i was in NY there in may and my o2 phone logged into T-mobile, but i had to manually change to cingular, because the rates are cheaper with cingular, and if i can remember correctly 171 also works well with cingular.
Ps i had a nokia 6230 and it showed up cingular on the display.

Sparky

detritus wrote:

If you are visiting the US and your operator supports roaming. if you cant borrow a tri band phone you could consider renting...

http://www.cellhire.com/networkpartners/

They even have options to rent a phone with a sim card with calls on a local network although the rates could work out pretty expensive.

To save massive expensive calls to Las vegas while i was in NY i got a Cingular "Go Phone" sim card with 30 dollars worth of calls and it lasted ages, one thing i also noticed it the feckers charge you to receive a call

byrnefm

Hi,

I was near Des Moines (IA) and Chicago last month and my experience was (with a quad-band Motorola V500 on O2 PAYG) as listed below. I know AT&T is now Cingular but they still have two different network codes at present and it does make a difference (see below):

- I could roam on Cingular and AT&T, though initially I had a bit of hassle connecting (after that, it was fine. Must've been the phone)

- I could send and receive texts on Cingular and AT&T

- in Chicago, I tried making a call on Cingular - but I got a recorded message saying I am not permitted to do so from my network. Please dial (some number) for help. On AT&T I was able to make a call and receive one. I didn't try receiving one while on Cingular.

It was just as well that we can roam onto Cingular for texting - Iowa doesn't appear to have AT&T, at least not anywhere I roamed to. There were other networks but I couldn't roam onto them.

Texts were 39c to make, free to receive.

I called my grandma's phone and saw that 'UNKNOWN NUMBER' comes up on hers. However, when I dialed my phone from hers, *her* number came up, bar the initial '1' - the US caller id system seems to have a bug in it (so +1-312-xxx-xxxx comes out as +312xxxxxxx on the phone).

Reception:
In Iowa, Cingular was great - probably because it's so flat! 5-bar from the house and 4-5 bars most of the time, except when I went into the woods. However, on the train from Chicago to southern Iowa, it came and went.

Chicago: very variable - not great, usually either on Cingular or AT&T. I was in a suburb in the NW of the city but was frequently down to 1 or 2 bars (out of 5).

Quick aside - in places like Walmart, you can get PAYG phones for as little as $40, so if you're there for say, two weeks and you need to make a lot of calls, this is one way to go. Sure, you have to pay for incoming but it's still a LOT cheaper than roaming incoming! Calls on those phone seemed to be around 10-15 cents a minute (off-peak, I presume).

flodis79

stereo_steve wrote:

Meteor is the only prepaid network that officially supports roaming outside europe.

In fact if you have a prepaid phone, there is very little reason not to be with them....except maybe for the fact eircom now own them

Yes, but seeing that you have to put E60 on your meteor prepaid sim to activate roaming, it's just easier to bring the o2.