Question about cell phone options for overseas visitors.

[envoy.livejournal.com]

Um. I'm going to be in in Boston for Arisia, for about 5-6 days total. It would be very useful if I could have a cell phone during that time, but I really don't want a year contract...

Are there pay-as-you-go phones I could buy and just use for those days, would they activate quickly enough? Are there places at the Boston airport that are worth renting a cell phone from or are they just so horribly expensive that I'm better off buying a basically pay-as-you-go dispoable anyway?

Comments

[beaq.livejournal.com]

Virgin Mobile has a pretty fair PAYG system, and the kyocera K9 phones are reasonably cheap at Best Buy or suchlike, if you can't wait for the shipping ($20 for the phone, free shipping at the website).

http://virginmobileusa.com/

[tkitch.livejournal.com]

I'll second this.

And if you have a Credit Card and net access, they activate in about 5 minutes or so.

[zarhooie.livejournal.com]

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?id=pcmcat1200050009&type=category&_DARGS=/site/en_US/catalog/fragments/product/olslinelistingsortfilter.jsp

[dalesql.livejournal.com]

What I've seen conventions do for at con phones is to buy the prepaid
phones at a convienence store, buy whatever the minimum number of minutes it takes to activate it, and then dispose of it at the end of the convention. ( Usually by selling to a member of the comittee/staff at a discount. )
If your regular phone is GSM, then renting a GSM phone from an airport
booth is probably a better deal, or if you have a friend with an old US GSM phone you can borrow for the week. Just gotta slip your chip from your regular phone to the loaner, and you have your normal phone number. Check your GSM plan details though, they may want large cash for international roaming.

[ckd]

There aren't any prepaid GSM SIM deals in the US as good as there are in the UK (GBP10 for a SIM and GBP5 of credit, for example). If you have a phone that can do 1900, you could roam or pay $50 for a SIM from T-Mobile or Cingular with $30 of credit on.

I'd go with a PAYG disposable of some kind, and sell/give it away after the con (or just hang on to it for another trip). There are two Best Buys and a Virgin Megastore easily T-able from the hotel if you decide to go with Virgin Mobile USA, or a Radio Shack not far away, or...lots of options.

[heinleinfan.livejournal.com]

I had one of the Virgin Mobile pay-as-you-go phones for almost two years. I only got rid of it because I got on a family plan with my guy. It was a kit I bought at Walmart for, I think, $90 and that included the first hour of minutes or something like that. It came with instructions, charger, battery and two faces for the phone. Took about five minutes to get activated after letting it charge over night. It had great reception in Detroit and here in Boston (though you can't get reception anywhere in the hotel...grr...) and they transferred my number from a Detroit area code to a Boston one when I moved.
It had voice mail and all the usual basic cell features, though it cost you minutes to retrieve voicemail.
You can give them a credit card when you activate it and then just press a few buttons on the phone to get more minutes instantly or you can go online and do it. And the minimum number of minutes was reasonable, like $20 worth or something at a time.

So I second...or is it third...the Virgin suggestion.

[madfilkentist]

I've had good luck with Tracfone.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_nicolai_/]

You're in England, so, going from there and talking about phones that originate in England:
If you have a contract phone, check if it's tri-band. Most are. If so, it will work in the Boston area, as most (if not all) of the GSM here is on GSM1900. If it's not tri-band, give up, get better handset. There is a fully-functional GSM network (more than one, actually) in the Boston area - T-Mobile and Cingular (cingular have slightly better coverage, I think). Then you can get your operator to enable international roaming and use it here. Won't be cheap, but for a few calls and/or SMS it won't be more expensive than other options..

If you have a PAYG phone, again check if it's tri-band. If so, check if your PAYG provider allows roaming to the USA. I happen to know that O2 does, since I have a O2 PAYG SIM in a phone and it works fine here. If they do, top up with lots of credit and/or make sure you have a way of topping-up that does not involve entering voucher numbers into the phone or going to a UK cash machine or whatever - one of the linked cards+credit card, or whatever.

If you have an unlocked phone (... get it unlocked at your local dodgy independent phone shop, in London, try north end of Charing Cross Road or along TCR) you can either take one of the above approaches, or reckon on buying a PAYG SIM in the USA. You can do this at, say, the Cingular stall in the Cambridgeside Galleria [mall], or other shops nearer the hotel. Beware that USA prepay is expensive to start ($20-$40 or so) and the minutes expire quickly (30 or 90 days). I'd go this route if you need to receive calls from Americans, or plan to do a lot of back and forth calling.

Which one is better really depends on if this is just to make contact occasionally or to be contactable (such that you'll phone back from a landline with a cheap prepay card or similar), or whether you plan to actually spend a lot of time talking into the cellphone.