The system in the States is different than in Europe, since you pay also for the incoming calls.

AFAIK there is no 100% equivalent to pay-as-you-go SIM cards, as being offered in Europe.

You should check www.t-mobile.com

They are the biggest GSM provider in the states.

Maybe AT&T has something, IIRC they use GSM in some areas.

-t

The T-Mobile one has a starter pack for existing T-Mobile phone owners (mine is a T-Mobile UK handset) where you buy a simcard, activation code and 120 mins airtime.

I reckon that might work, what do you guys think?

Any other suggestions?

http://www.virginmobileusa.com/

WTF?? Why do you have to pay for incoming calls?

Yeah, I haven't figured that out in two years.
Stupid system here...

Well, on the upside, everyone get's a local telephone number for his cell, so for the caller, it's basically free...

-t

yeah, land of the free. NOT!

Check with your carrier if you have auto-roam capability.

Yeah, for more than $1 per min, it's all yours...

Btw, back then, when I checked, that $1 even applied for INCOMING text messages. What a load of crap. You have NO control over that...

-t

Depends on the carrier and the plan. I gave my US mobile to my mom as I travel frequently out of the country. I have a plan with a carrier in Singapore where I've been working and the rates are more than affordable and well worth it considering the lack of hassle in pre-paids.
As I originally said, check with your carrier and find out the rates BEFORE doing anything. Paying a sum like that would be stupid. But not all carriers have the same rates.

Welcome to the crappy world of US wireless telecoms! I haven't tried it, but I'd imagine prepaid T-Mobile would work for you. Cingular and AT&T (the other big GSM providers) may also have something for you. I'm not aware of any pay-as-you-go products available here.

Because in the U.S., local land-line calls are not metered.

Here, when making a local call, it's free, so when you call a wireless user, somebody has to pay for the airtime. I guess they decided that here, it's not fair to make the caller pay for the airtime, so the cellphone owner always pays for it. Because local calls here are free, we don't have a system set up for metering them. More importantly, mobile phones here do not have their own area codes (as is the case in Europe), so a caller here has no way of knowing whether they're calling a landline or a wireless phone. That would be VERY bad if landline calls were free, mobile calls metered, and nobody could tell which is which!

So the upshot is that here, the wireless owner pays the airtime, but when YOU call someone onto their mobile phone from a landline, it's free. So it all works out to be about the same in the end!

tooki

New York doesn't have metered landline calling anymore? I thought they did...

And plus haven't some mobile carriers offered unlimited minutes? Thought I saw that last year. Anyway, I got a refurb nokia last year which came free with the purchase of a $50 AT&T recharge. I do the pay as you go thing everywhere, and that works for me for the time being. I hate being tied down with those 2 year contracts...

There might be some isolated pockets (any New Yorkers here wanna chime in?) that retained metered local calling, but this country, as a whole, has unmetered local calling. (Most phone companies also offer cheaper plans for land lines that include a limited number of local calls, rather than unlimited, but they're still of unlimited call duration.)

Yes, unlimited mobile phone plans exist, too, but they're on the rare side.

I saw an interesting one the other day: some little town in Kansas set up a local mobile phone system. $40 a month for unlimited local calls. The idea is to offer locals what amounts to a wireless phone that can be used as if it were a landline.

tooki

The only pre-paid card that I've used is for long distace on a regualar phone. It's easy to use.