T-Mobile USA

T-Mobile USA prepaid mobile phone sim card

We searched for the best value pay-as-you-go mobile phone sim cards for travellers visiting the United States and found that the T-Mobile sim card is the best overall option combining generous data and local call allowance, simple pay-as-you-go daily charges and ease of topping up at thousands of shops throughout the United States.
T-Mobile has several prepaid plans. The Pay By The Day plans are generally the best deal for most travellers and when you activate your sim card you get the choice of putting it on either the $2/day or $3/day Pay By The Day plan.
It is cheap for your friends and family to call you since calls to mobile phones in the United States cost the same as calls to landlines. In many cases it will be cheaper for your friends and family in the UK to call you on your USA mobile that it currently costs them to call your UK mobile

Activate on the T-Mobile Pay By The Day plan of your choice

We have found that this is by far the most popular rate plan for most travellers visiting the United States. Benefits of this rate plan include:

• Your own USA phone number
• USD $10 included credit
• Unlimited calls to landlines and mobiles phones in the United States
• Unlimited text messages to US mobile phones
• Unlimited incoming calls
• Unlimited data (the $2/day plan gives you unlimited data at EDGE speed on T-Mobile’s 2G network and the $3/day plan gives you 200MB of 3G data per day, and once you have used your 200MB your data slows down to EDGE speed)

Activating your service

After you have received your sim card you can activate it to receive your US mobile phone number. Activating your sim only takes five minutes and within 24 hours of activating your sim (although it is usually much quicker) you will receive an email containing your US mobile phone number.
During the activation process you get to choose whether you want to go on the $2/day or $3/day Pay By The Day plan (both give you unlimited incoming calls, unlimited calls to US mobile and landline phones, unlimited text messages to US mobiles and unlimited data, but internet access is faster on the $3/day plan) and you also have the option of requesting the area code of your mobile phone number.

How much does it cost to send a text message?

It costs 10¢/message to send or receive an international SMS text message and 25¢/message to send or receive an international MMS picture message. Text messages (and picture messages) are free to US mobiles.
Messages sent or received using apps such as iMessage, What’s App or Telegram are free and will come out of your data use.

 How do I make cheaper international calls with my T-Mobile USA sim card?

T-Mobile’s standard charge to call landlines and mobile phones in the UK is USD $1.99 per minute, but there are several apps that you install on your phone that allow you to make much cheaper international calls. These apps and services include Facetime, Localphone, Rebtel, Skype and Viber. With one of these apps installed on your phone you can call home for free (if you’re calling someone else who has the same app installed on their phone) or for just a few pence per minute. Any of these apps will give you massive savings on your international calls, but we particularly like the Rebtel service as it works on all phones (even basic phones that don’t let you install apps) and with Rebtel you don’t even need to have a data service for this to work

What size sim card should I buy?

If you have an Apple iPhone 5, iPhone 5c, iPhone 5s or the Motorola Moto X you need to buy a nano sim.
If you have an Apple iPhone 4 or iPhone 4S; an HTC One X; LG Google Nexus 4; Nokia N9 or any Nokia Lumia Windows Phone or the Samsung Galaxy SIII, Galaxy S4 or Galaxy S5 you will need to buy a micro sim.
For all other mobile phones (including the Apple iPhone 3G and iPhone 3Gs and older versions of the Samsung Galaxy) you will need a regular sim card.

Coverage:

The T-Mobile GSM mobile network offers good coverage in most areas of the United States including Hawaii and even Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands. You can check coverage on the T-Mobile website.
T-Mobile has the largest 1900 Mhz GSM network in the United States and is the best option if you have a tri-band phone, but you will get better coverage if you have a quadband phone that also supports the 850 MHz GSM band.
Please note that there are some areas of the United States where T-Mobile uses the networks of partner networks, which range from AT&T to smaller regional operators. These networks may run on the 850 MHz GSM band. In these cases you would need a quad band phone compatible with both the 850 MHz and 1900 MHz frequencies. This mostly impacts visitors to rural areas including large parts of Alaska as well as Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming.