Mobile Sim for Canada and US?

Mobile Sim for Canada and US?

Author
Discussion

Dave J

Original Poster:

892 posts

272 months

Friday 5th July
quotequote all
Going to Vancouver, Seattle and San Francisco.

Could you provide any tips on what’s the best options for a sim for data principly ?.

thanks
David

mattyn1

6,040 posts

161 months

Friday 5th July
quotequote all
A lot here recommend eSims - especially Airolo etc - but I went for a physical sim from T Mobile - bought on amazon - approx £40 for a month unlimited data/calls/texts. Seems ideal considering we are road tripping!

surveyor

18,059 posts

190 months

Friday 5th July
quotequote all
T-mobile also do a payg e-sim also

The G Kid

795 posts

129 months

Friday 5th July
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I'd definitely endorse Airalo.

HTP99

23,128 posts

146 months

Friday 5th July
quotequote all
The G Kid said:
I'd definitely endorse Airalo.
Used them last year in Turkey after a recommendation on here, would definitely use them again.

Truckosaurus

11,881 posts

290 months

Friday 5th July
quotequote all
Depending on your UK mobile contract and travels dates (ie. does the trip cross into multiple billing periods) it might just be worth buying a roaming package for your existing number.

peter tdci

1,805 posts

156 months

Friday 5th July
quotequote all
I had a couple of weeks travelling down from San Francisco down to San Diego a couple of years ago. My O2 sim couldn't even connect to a network in SF! I bought a T-Mobile SIM locally for around $30, I think.

However, I did another trip to SE Asia last year (Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand via Doha) and went for an esiim. Data only, but I could voice call with WhatsApp etc and it worked perfectly across all the countries I visited. Now I'm sold on them. I went with Airalo - IIRC it was $17 for 30 days (I forget how much data it was for, it was enough, but it would have been easy to top it up through their app). If you are interested in Airalo, I've got a referral code which I've posted before - several other PHers have used it. You would get a bit of a discount and I'd get the same in credit.

Dal3D

1,213 posts

157 months

Friday 5th July
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We used Three payg £10 data sims in NYC a few months ago and worked well smile

tim0409

4,765 posts

165 months

Friday 5th July
quotequote all
Dal3D said:
We used Three payg £10 data sims in NYC a few months ago and worked well smile
I did that last year when I went to Florida. I bought a 12gb sim before I left and used that. Worked without any issues and it was cheap.

Dave J

Original Poster:

892 posts

272 months

Saturday 6th July
quotequote all
petertdci
You have a message re referral

peter tdci

1,805 posts

156 months

Saturday 6th July
quotequote all
Dave J said:
petertdci
You have a message re referral
Thanks Dave. Reply is on its way.

nvubu

168 posts

135 months

Thursday 18th July
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We are off to the States in August to drop our daughter off at University in OH. We are all with O2 on unlimited everything (transferred over from Virgin).

Researching SIM cards for the trip and I read in another thread on PH about O2 bolt ons. Went and had a look and found that we have the Travel Inclusive Zone included - so no SIM card required. However a few posts above peter tdci says that he had a crap/no connection with O2.

We will be on the East of the USA in NY, MD, PA, OH, VA and WV. Daughter and Son have just returned from a 3 night trip to Prague - both used about 10Gb of data according to the O2 website.

My questions are:

- Has anyone else had any experience with the O2 Travel Inclusive Zone in the US, and if so, how was it?
- Would it cope with data usage like the above?

Went to the US in April with my daughter and we had a SIM and an eSIM from Travsim - which both worked fine.

peter tdci

1,805 posts

156 months

Friday 19th July
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nvubu said:
Researching SIM cards for the trip and I read in another thread on PH about O2 bolt ons. Went and had a look and found that we have the Travel Inclusive Zone included - so no SIM card required. However a few posts above peter tdci says that he had a crap/no connection with O2.

My questions are:

- Has anyone else had any experience with the O2 Travel Inclusive Zone in the US, and if so, how was it?
- Would it cope with data usage like the above?

Went to the US in April with my daughter and we had a SIM and an eSIM from Travsim - which both worked fine.
Hi! I'd have to say that my experience with O2 in San Francisco was an exception. We drove down to San Diego from there and when I swapped back to my O2 SIM, I could get a connection. The only pain I can remember afterwards was getting a text from Halifax to confirm a card payment for a hotel asking for a yes/no reply. I did reply, without thinking about it - and it cost me £5 !

nvubu

168 posts

135 months

Friday 19th July
quotequote all
Delving further, it seems like the d/l speed is capped at 2Mbs. I think that will be fine for me and my wife - I'll only need it for traffic/sat nav as I download my Spotify playlists, but our son and daughter maybe not.

Have to have a think about this further.