Cell Phone and Internet Help

[jddave44]

My wife & I will be taking a 8-10 week cross country trip in the spring. Route thru Chicago, Denver, Bryce Canyon area, north to Calgary Alberta, Vancouver BC then back thru northern states.My question is can you buy a sim card to insert in my blackberry for emergency phone calls or do you have to buy a phone from TracFone or Verizion with no contracts. Also what is the best bet for a memory stick for our HP laptop so we don't have to rely on Wi-Fi. Any sugestions would be appreciated.

Pam & Dave
Oshawa,Ontario,Canada

[tatest]

Tracfone, Net10, StraightTalk are programs through Tracfone to re-sell service on various GSM or CDMA (depends on where you want to activate) providers. Used to be the GSM coverage was more complete (multiple providers) but CDMA is a lot better now if activated as Verizon.

Tracfone works for me because it costs me about $6 a month to keep the phine active, and I'm still buying more minutes than I'll ever use. But data has to convert units (minutes) back to dollars based on how I bought them, and get charged by dollar per data quantity. All bookkeeping is done on the phone itself. Net10 is also phone accounting, structured so you pay a fixed amount per minute, rather than buying blocks of activation time.

TracFone and Net10 are almost giving away the phones, so if you buy a cheap enough phone it can be treated as disposable.

StraightTalk is sold through Walmart, as so much per month unlimited text, talk, and messaging, and a fixed amount of data at high speed before throttling. I think the standard plan includes international calling, something you buy as an separate service for Tracfone. You usually pay close to full price for smartphones (or bring your own maybe) but the simple phones are fairly deeply discounted.

Virgin resells Sprint services. Data devices and phones are separate programs. The difference between buying as Virgin versus contracting Sprint is that Virgin stays on the Sprint network, Sprint customers can roam to some other compatble networks. Cricket is a similar reseller, usually on Sprint, maybe always.

Millenicom resells data services, on Verizon and Sprint networks, you plan is one or the other, not both, different terms.

All the major providers, ATT, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile have their own pay as you go plans, in most cases data devices and phones separately. You either pay for blocks of time/data, or tiered levels of service per month. Rates are often twice as high as resellers. International calling varies.

Look into plan details for roaming, some pay as you go will roam into Canada or Canada and Mexico, or even some places in the Caribbean, which others are continental U.S. only, depending on provider and reseller arrangements with provider. I don't know of any Prepaid with global roaming,

[jddave44]

Thanks for all the feedback ! We will be able to check out our options when we visit our daughter in Chicago for the Christmas holidays. We have delayed our travel plans due to a major ice storm and flooding- a good reason why you need communication when you are travelling.

Thanks again
Pam & Dave
Oshawa,ON,anada

[Gdetrailer]

obgraham wrote:
Minutes of talking is a whole different kettle than internet bandwidth, measured in kilo-mega-gigabytes. It doesn't take long to run through a whole lot of bytes if you are an internet junkie.

Umm.. for 25/month you can get 1.5 GB data plan a pay as you go internet from Virgin mobile..

HERE

so for three months that is $75 plus USB device for less than $50 and you are at $125 and can reactivate at a later date if they decide to tour the US again.

There are more pay as you go internet outfits so you can shop around for best coverage and cost..

Add that to a $5 Tracfone and a couple of minutes cards and you are STILL less than $200 for BOTH phone and internet.

[obgraham]

Minutes of talking is a whole different kettle than internet bandwidth, measured in kilo-mega-gigabytes. It doesn't take long to run through a whole lot of bytes if you are an internet junkie.

[owenssailor]

So for $205 for Tracfone you would get the phone and 5 200 min cards that would get 2000 minutes talk anywhere in North America and 450 days until the minutes would expire if you loaded everything on all at once (w.hich you obviously would not do - just add as needed for either minutes or time)

2000 minutes is a LOT of talking!

[Gdetrailer]

Redsky wrote:
Verizon will provide the best nationwide coverage around the USA with AT&T catching up in second place. In your situation I would buy a no contract flip phone from Verizon. The flip phones can go weeks without recharging. My Blackberry needed daily charging and I find a flip phone a lot more convenient.

Verizon has prepaid plans where you get a phone and pay a $35 activation fee for $60 and then about a dollar a day for service with no contract required. Figure $100 for the first 30 days and then $40 a month for the remainder of your trip. For the 3 months the total cost will under $200, which for the USA is not all that bad. With the US companies you will be charged for inbound calls as well as outbound ones so buying an unlimited minutes plan is usually a good idea.

:h

$200 for three months? :E

Thats just plain silly.

You CAN get a Tracphone for as little as $5.00 SEE HERE Phone should come with at least 10 minutes plus 30 or 60 days time.

That phone includes the Double Minutes.

Then you can buy 60, 120, 200, 450 minutes cards which add 90 days for each card for as low as $19.95 (60 min card).

Or you can buy a 400 minute 1 yr card for $99.

Remember the phone DOUBLES the minutes for you automatically and if you watch for them you can get BONUS MINUTES codes which you need to enter at the time of adding a card.

A 60 minute card becomes 120 minutes, 120 minute card becomes 240 minutes, 200 minute card becomes 400 minutes, a 450 minute card becomes 900 minutes.

Bonus codes typically range from 50 minutes up to 250 minutes depending on the card you buy...

You would have to be talking a lot to spend $200 on a Tracfone for 3-4 months...

[Lorne_Lorraine]

The last few years we've use Tracfone for phone calls: Walmart Tracfone

And Virgin's Broadband2go for internet: Walmart Broadband2go and Virgin's site

But check the coverage map for the Broadband2go. It's worked well in the east and coast to coast in the south for us.

[owenssailor]

Tracfone costs about $20 to buy with some minutes on it. I added 400 minutes last week for $40. That added 90 days to the service time. Calls anywhere in US Canada and Mexico are on a minute by minute basis. No extra long distance charges.I have recharged my LG chicklet phone twice in 5 weeks. It is on all the time and we have used over 200 minutes of talk time.

Seems pretty cheap to me.

[Redsky]

Verizon will provide the best nationwide coverage around the USA with AT&T catching up in second place. In your situation I would buy a no contract flip phone from Verizon. The flip phones can go weeks without recharging. My Blackberry needed daily charging and I find a flip phone a lot more convenient.

Verizon has prepaid plans where you get a phone and pay a $35 activation fee for $60 and then about a dollar a day for service with no contract required. Figure $100 for the first 30 days and then $40 a month for the remainder of your trip. For the 3 months the total cost will under $200, which for the USA is not all that bad. With the US companies you will be charged for inbound calls as well as outbound ones so buying an unlimited minutes plan is usually a good idea.

[wa8yxm]

Blackberry makes several devices, SOME work with AT&T or T-Mobile (or both) some with Sprint/Nextel, some with Verizon.

Alas, the answer to your question depends on two things.

1: Where you are traveling (Which of those 4 providers covers, NOTE verizon has the most coverage, but alas, not the best customer service)

2: Which model blackberry you have.

Some may work with all of them depending on the sim. some, just one.

[Heisenberg]

We have had good luck with the Virgin Mobile hotspot 3G&4G good coverage along major routes, it uses the Sprint network. We also use a cheap Tracfone along with my Republic Wireless Motorola which uses Sprint. The Tracfone has provided coverage off of the major routes when Sprint dried up. My Motorola will also access WiFi to make phone calls and check email when Sprint is unavailable.

[owenssailor]

For the last 3 winters we have used a Tracfone that came with the double minuts plan. Since we are in the US for 4 months it gets used enough that the time keeps carrying over. It is now good until Oct 2014.

Cell coverage has been generally good. Only a couple of times that we did not have service - just like any cell phone.

I put a suspend service on my Rogers Blackberry. It costs $5/ month and then will revert back to my normal plan.

According to Rogers, even with the plan suspended he Blackberry will still be able to make 911 calls.

Getting US service from Rogers as noted above is ridiculous

A 200 minute Tracfone card that with the double minutes add 400 minutes costs $39. It adds 90 days to the service period.

The phone does texting and also will browse the internet. TIme deducted is not much.

One thing to wath out for - some prepaid phones will not call to cell phones in Canada from the US. One reason we chose Tracfone.

[Beverley_Ken]

We have/get at TracPhone from Walmart south of the border and use it as the primary contact in the US. We are considering Walmart Internet on the Go. We generally just use campground/McD's/etc wifi.

We usually get a Travel US package from Rogers that includes Talk, Text and Minimal Data for emergency use. Saw one Rogers US travel plan 3/30/300. 3gb of data for 30 days for only $300.00, not even in my dreams.

Keep in mind that cell phone service in some area of the west and the Rockies are none existant

Beverley and Ken

[Bob_Shaw]

Go to Walmart, in the states, and buy one of their cheap prepaid phones. As for Internet, you may want to check on one of the Verizon hot spots. My son has one and likes it. I had an AT&T air card that worked pretty well on the east coast, but, I don't think the coverage is too good on out west. I currently use the Personal hot spot on my iphone to tether my laptop. I doubt there is a tether plan for the Walmart phones, but, you could check.