Hi Paul, Yes, you can purchase a pre-paid GSM phone at Walmart or Target stores. Look for carriers in the USA such as AT&T or T-mobile who both use SIM cards. The Verizon carrier also sells pre-paid phones, but to my knowledge, don't use SIM cards.
In Canada, one of the major GSM carriers is Rogers. My AT&T phone changes over to the Rogers network when I cross the border, but I incur international charges if I use the phone. I have never been in Canada long enough to try the pre-paid SIM card option. Check the details with the USA carriers if they provide nationwide (Hawaii & New York coverage) - regular monthly plan holders usually get coverage like this. It has been some years since I bought one of these for my mom and the details are foggy. HTH. -Pat On Wed, Jul 1, 2009 at 9:44 PM, Paul Ewins<[email protected]> wrote: > Hi all, > my girlfriend and I are heading off at the end of the month on a six > week trip to Hawaii, New York, Montreal and the south-east of Canada. Rather > than use global roaming and risk large charges from our local (Australian) > carrier what we have done in the past is buy a cheap phone or a SIM card > when we get to our destination and use a pre-paid account. > > It looks like my antique Nokia is incompatible with US frequencies anyway, > so the plan is to pop into Walmart and get a cheap pre-paid phone there. Is > it safe to assume that any carrier with coverage in Hawaii will have > coverage in New York? Once we get to Montreal I assume that we will have > to get a new SIM card, and possibly a new phone if the Walmart one is locked > to the carrier. Or is their a carrier that makes swapping from the US to > Canada easy? > > If you have any recommendations or a better plan I'd love to hear it. > > Paul Ewins > Melbourne, Australia -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
