[Pomp joggie]

Hi
I brought my Nokia E65from SA and verison's sim cards do not work on it. AT&T's do so i decided to get n pay as you go from them. To my shock i discovered that using cellphones in this country are very expensive.
Things I picked up;

You pay if somebody calls you
Whether it's a survey or just a normal call.

You pay if somebody sends you a SMS.
So again if somebody send out marketing SMS's you will pay for that.

You pay to listen to your own voicemail.

Don't brows the net from your phone! It will cost you $0.1c per KB so 100kb = $1.

Can anybody help me get a better provider as this is not acceptable to pay so much for everything. IT Might be cheaper to roam with a SA phone if you don't use it much!!! hehehe.

[Sam]

Look at the different packages from the different carriers. The company I am currently using provides for free calls between it's users and free sms's . It is part of the package.

BTW: Pay as you go charges you for everything and more...

This post has been edited by Sam: 16 October 2008 - 11:22 AM

[Ian]

Well... Randall needs a paycheck!

AT&T Chairman and CEO Randall Stephenson earned about $18 million last year-about $1.2 million in salary and the rest in performance-based bonuses and stock awards, according to BusinessWeek, which does not rely on company figures and uses its own methods to calculate such things

[Monique]

We have Nextel, and our plan has free mobile to mobile and then $5 a month for 300 text messages, per phone ($20 pm for unlimited sms) $5 a month for unlimited internet per phone.

I find prepaid expensive, although it's a good thing for a teenager, then they can buy their own minutes without the worries of an enormous phone bill.

[Pomp joggie]

Thanks
Unfortunately i cannot get a contract at this stage as i'm still looking for a job but i must tell you cellphones here are much more expensive than in SA which is strange as they have n bigger user base

[Utah]

Thanks
Unfortunately i cannot get a contract at this stage as i'm still looking for a job but i must tell you cellphones here are much more expensive than in SA which is strange as they have n bigger user base

Yes and no in my experiance. The biggest mistake I keep making is multiplying the US$ by 7 (which is what the rate was when I arrived). a) the rate is now around 11 and as a percentage of my income here its actually cheaper.

I will concede that it feels more expensive, but certainly once you get on a contract package deal its not too bad. We are with T-Mobile and they have a MyFaves package. We have three lines and each line can choose 5 favorite numbers. Calls to those numbers are free - no $ cost or minutes used. We barely make a dent in our combined 700 minutes a month as the calls we make are mostly to people on MyFaves! But I do curse the heck out of people when they send me an SMS. That hits me 15c. But I can pay $5 and have unlimted sms.

[usadele]

Hi,

Have a fancy Nokia that I brought from SA. Want to use on a pay-as-you-go basis w/ T-Mobile or AT&T SIM card but apparently the phone must first be "unblocked" before I can send and receive sms messages. Anyone know anything about this and how to get the phone functional?

Thanks!

This post has been edited by Janneman: 02 November 2008 - 10:05 PM
Reason for edit: Deleted a double posting

[Janneman]

I know nothing about these things, but do you think this might help?

GSM Liberty

[gman]

>>usadele
generally SA phones are unlocked. some old ones aren't. just go into tmobile/at&t and ask them to test a SIM in your handset and you should be good to go.

[Pomp joggie]

I thought that i'll go ahead and update this post for all SA people coming to America.

There's 2 Technologies in the US. GSM like SA and CDMA. Now I'm not going to explain the differences or even get technical. The average user don't care about it. The four big Cell services providers are Verizon and Sprint/Nextel (Both use CDMA) and AT&T and T-Mobile (Both use GSM)

So if you want to use a unlocked phone from SA in the US just be sure to go with a GSM service provider. There's no use bringing you Cell phone from SA if you're going to get a contract in US. They all give you phones with the 24 month contract.

Contract Vs Prepaid - A general overview
Contract the same as in SA. They WILL check your credit and you won't have any when you land so they either charge you a huge deposit or they will not take you as a customer. You get a phone and if you want something fancy you need to pay additional $$ to get it. Here's the thin to keep in mind that's totally different to SA.
1. You pay/use your minutes if somebody calls you. Whether it's a survey or just a normal call.
2. You pay (or it will come out of your SMS bundle) if somebody sends you a SMS. So again if somebody sends out marketing SMS's you will pay for that.
3. You pay/use your own minutes to listen to your own voicemail.
And you'll pay to use the 411 directory assistance same as in SA
So keep that in mind when considering a contract or you can just go with the unlimited contracts.


Roaming is a term they use in the US when you are in a place where your carrier does not have a tower so it will jump to another carriers tower but you are still in the US. So this is not international roaming but local roaming within the US. Most postpaid/ contract carriers like Sprint will not charge you for that as long as you don't abuse it. So let's say you stay in a place and you have good sprint coverage and you move to a new house and you don't have coverage from Sprint and you go through one of their roaming partners they will let you know that use to many roaming minutes a month and might start charging for that. So I hope this more or less explains local roaming within the US.

Now lets get to Prepaid (No Credit check required)
There are 2 forms of prepaid in the US. Prepaid as you know it from SA where you buy the sim card and you add time as and when you need it. This option is EXTREMELY expensive and I would not recommend it at all. Cause you will be calling over the place looking for work a place to stay etc etc. (That's what I did when I landed in the US ans you can spend $100 in no time trust me)

Prepaid option number 2 is something to consider. I'm NOT talking about you local wireless company (Cause here they have those here in the US. They only operate in a certain area and buy "airtime" from the big wireless companies)I'm talking about a nationwide prepaid company. Once again you will need to see if you are in a area with good coverage before signing up and remember they do not allow roaming (I explained what roaming is earlier). You will either not have service outside the coverage area or they will charge you for it and it's not cheap. You can double your monthly bill real quick.

So my suggestion are as follows;
This is just and example. I'm not selling boost mobile. Walmart have something like this for the Verizon network, T-Mobile and AT&T
Get yourself a prepaid carrier like Boost mobile (or any other national prepaid carrier)Boost is part of Sprint and runs on the National Sprint network. you will need to buy the phone cash upfront and then you pay $50 a month for unlimited Calls, SMS and Data. Get yourself and Android phone and because you have unlimited data you can use the FREE Google maps application thus saving you money and not to worry about local maps and a GPS like Garmin. You always have access to your email so that should help when applying for jobs. You can search for personnel agencies etc ... I think you get what i'm saying. You don't have a contract to get out of if you move to a place where the service suck ;-)

Once again I'm not selling Boost Mobile but I hope this information will help somebody cause cell phone carriers operate differently in the US and you do not have a credit score when you land and above everything else you need to stretch you money as far as possible. This way you have "Pap nat" phone with no surprises when the bill comes.

[springbokmarine]

Well said. Also, there are many different bands or frequencies that cellphones work on. South African cellphones work on some of the bands that US phones work on but not all of them unless you have an expensive world phone. Even then you may not have good reception. This has happened to me with a Nokia I got in SA and then again with a Sony Ericsson I took to SA. On recent trips, my iPhone has been working well in SA, but turn off the data plan or you'll get a nasty surprise on your return.