[195840] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: USA local SIM card
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jean-Francois Mezei)
Mon Sep 18 03:07:47 2017
X-Original-To: nanog@nanog.org
To: nanog@nanog.org
From: Jean-Francois Mezei <jfmezei_nanog@vaxination.ca>
Date: Sun, 17 Sep 2017 15:52:07 -0400
In-Reply-To: <59BEABEC.7020101@netassist.ua>
Errors-To: nanog-bounces@nanog.org
On 2017-09-17 13:07, Max Tulyev wrote:
AT&T's $45 prepaid pans and its more expemsive sibbling (I think $65)
allow over 6GB of data at LTE speeds, and the rest is unlimited but at
2G speeds (I think).
The AT&T plans at the $45 and higher levels allows data and voice
roaming into Canada, as long as your usage in Canada represents less
than 50% of total use.
The AT&T plan allows you to remove video throttling (the T-Mobile plan
doesn't and has more severe net neutrality violations).
If you obtain a SIM card from eBay, there is a hard to find web access
to set it up (normal AT&T web site forces you to buy a SIM card which
AT&T won't deliver outside of USA).
https://www.att.com/prepaid/activations/#/activate.html
In my case, I choose AT&T because I tested T-Mobile a few years ago
along the route taken and found too many areas without service,
interestingly, one area where in 1998-1999, I had service with Omnipoint
on a 1900 only phone (Fort Edward NY).
Note on T-Mobile: its coverage map expects you to be on postpaid plans
which includes areas where you're allowed to roam on AT&T, but not
necessarily if on prepaid, so hard to tell if you will really get
service based on its maps.
Also note: AT&T on an iPhone gets to disable the "manual" seach for
available carriers, so you can't test in a town if T-Mobile would also
be available. You can insert you own SIM card just to scan for networks
and with roaming disbaled, you won't encurr any charges by home carrier.
