The IT Nerd

Frequent readers who follow my travels know that I mention two things over and over again:

1. Canadian carriers charge way too much for using your cell phone overseas.
2. To avoid roaming charges overseas, have an unlocked phone and use a local SIM card.

That works pretty much everywhere except the United States where it is difficult to get a local SIM card. But because of a recent business trip, I can now share with you a way to get around that. Assuming that you have an unlocked cell phone, here’s what you do:

1. Head to a gas station, WalMart, Target, or anywhere else that sells pre-paid credit cards. Then put at least $30 USD on it.
2. Next head for the nearest T-Mobile store and sign up for their tourist plan which serves up 1,000 talk minutes and 2GB of LTE data for $30 USD. The only catch is that it is only good for three weeks. But that’s not a problem for most people who travel to the US. You’ll need the pre-paid credit card from step 1 to pay for this plan as you can’t pay for cell service in the US with a non-US credit card.
3. Declare victory and have a beer.

I did this and it worked fine for me. Thus I have no doubt that it will work for you. Plus it is way cheaper than anything that Rogers, Bell, or Telus offers with minimal hassle, assuming you’ll be away for a week or more. Now you’ll lose your Canadian number, but that isn’t the biggest deal in the world if you save a few bucks. Let me know if you try this route the next time you travel to the US by leaving a comment.

This entry was posted on August 4, 2017 at 8:57 am and is filed under Tips with tags Cell Phones. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.