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Data roaming in the USA

Argel

Argel

Newbie
I want to take my UK-bought rooted HTC Desire with me to the US on holiday and make use of location-based services and not worry too much about data charges. I'm with Vodafone and they seem to be impoossibly expensive, though they seem to set out to obfuscate so it's difficult to be sure. I understand there are difficulties getting a temporary SIM in the States.

Any advice gratefully received...

Argel
 
You can use the Desire on AT&T's network, but there are some considerations. First, AT&T operates its 3G band in the U.S. at 1900MHz, not 2100MHz commonly used in the UK, Europe and most of Asia. If your phone doesn't support 1900MHz for 3G, then you will only get 2G (EDGE) data speeds.

You can get a pre-paid SIM from AT&T (called GO sim, or GO phone, or some such nonsense) and just pay for the minutes you use. Of course you'll get a new phone number with that SIM, but if you want to receive calls, you can always forward your current number to the new one. With SMS, I don't think they can be forwarded.

There are also plenty of WiFi options ... Hotels, Libraries, Starbucks on every corner, which will help out the usage for large data uses.

T-Mobile is the other GSM carrier in the U.S. but I am not sure of their options.
 
Argel said:
I want to take my UK-bought rooted HTC Desire with me to the US on holiday and make use of location-based services and not worry too much about data charges.
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"Location based services" is a really vague phrase. If your location-enabled apps require data then there's little you can do about it except stay in airplane mode except when you need to use such apps. You can enable WiFi while in airplane mode. If there are free WiFi access points that you can use that will help reduce your data roaming.

For GPS nav apps what you can do is obtain one that uses locally stored maps. CoPilot and Navigon are a couple of options.
 
Thanks both. Apologies for lack of clarity.

I want to be able to use the data connection to make best use of common geographic apps like places, layar, bus/train timetables, google navigator, quype etc. I'm happy to pay a respectable sum up-front for a sim with a data connection which will cover me for a week. Calls are of lesser importance. I don't want to have to seek out wifi every time I'd like to see a review of a coffee shop that looks ineresting or some historical background for a local feature. I rely on the Desire to get me around and fill in background in the UK - just want to be able to do the same in Boston without going bankrupt.

Argel
 
I will also be visiting the US soon with my Desire and was going to ask the same question! - I have looked at the options, and AT&T seem very expensive for data on their prepaid tarrif, at 1 cent per KB ($10.24 per MB)

T-mobile have a much better prepaid option, with the choice of purchasing a web day pass for $1.49, which covers 'unlimited' data use for 24 hours, although confusingly on the T-mobile website this has now changed to "Get a Pay As You Go data Web DayPass for just $1.49 per hour" which makes no sense.
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The only issue with T-mobile is that their 3G services operate on the 1700/2100 band, which UK desires dont support, so the fastest speeds would be EDGE. I too would like to know if there are any better value options out there and it seems that it is much more complicated than the UK 3G options.
 
Does anyone have any experience of ATT DataPro packages. Can they be purchased for a third-party phone?

Argel
 
I took my Desire to the US with me last year and using Google Maps a few times raped me, phone bill was
 
Shouldn't be much of an issue, my gf got a PAYG SIM for Oz when she was out there last year - also did the same with a Broadband dongle
 
I have a UK version of Desire. I used it in the US. I went into an AT&T store and they gave me the SIM card for free. I just had to put a minimum of $15 on it. They have different plans to choose from - I think it's basically the same as GoPhone (just without buying the phone) so you can look at that online.

I used mine mostly for calls though. I recall the data being like 100MB for around $20 or something.

As noted above, you won't get 3G anyway. I'm not sure how well your location based functions will serve you if you only get 2G speeds?
 
alexsim2004 said:
The only issue with T-mobile is that their 3G services operate on the 1700/2100 band, which UK desires dont support, so the fastest speeds would be EDGE. I too would like to know if there are any better value options out there and it seems that it is much more complicated than the UK 3G options.
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You won't get 3G in the US with any carrier, unless you buy a new phone. The bands are all different for 3G.

I'm not sure if the Desire works with T-Mobile. I didn't even consider them due to bad personal experience (myself and some friends) a few years back when I lived in the US.
 
Many thanks for all the replies - genuinely useful, as you'd expect for this community.

I'm beginning to think that the cheapest way to do what I want would be to find a dealer who'll sell me a second-hand phone when I arrive and cash it in at the end. Anyone ever tried anything like that?

Such a pity that the companies' greed renders a piece of technology I've come to rely on almost useless in an international context. 1GB as part of a
 
To answer my own question, in the end I solved the problem - at a cost.

I bought a one-month pre-pay sim from SimpleMobile which gave me unlimited US calls, unlimited data and unlimited texts (including international texts). I paid
 
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