Hello!
I’m visiting America for the first time in my life with my dad for a road trip here in under 2 weeks, and I cannot wait!
We’re going to be on a 2-week road trip and we’ve just come to talk about cellular data. How will we be able to use our phones overseas when we only have a European plan in our phone carrier plan here in Denmark?
ESim? We’re landing in San Francisco on the 4th of July. Are there any phone carriers at the airport?
EDIT: I’ve found out that my dad pays for something called: “Roaming World” in our current phone carrier subscription so we won’t have any problem with cellular data overseas! Thanks for all the recommendations though, guys!
11 comments
You can buy sim cards are the airport, but they would be cheaper from any convenience store or pharmacy away from the airport. Most are all the same and the only real difference is data pricing.
I would check with your local phone plan and see what options they have for international travel before deciding on getting a local American SIM card. My current phone plan has international call and data so I don’t worry about new Sim cards when I travel.
I would just buy the international plan from your current provider. That’s what I do when I travel.
If you want to mess around with sim cards I’m sure you can find them on Amazon, eBay, etc
Check if you have an international data plan or coverage from your carrier.
If you don’t, you can buy a prepaid data plan for a month. If you have an esim card on your phone, you can buy cheap esim plans before you even leave, which will turn on when you land.
What modes of transport will you be using? If you’re driving through rural areas, you should consider downloading the maps, music and other apps you might need. There are spots where service can get spotty and your agreements with US towers might make things a but worse. You’ll still be able to navigate, listen to music, etc if you download the routes and playlists ahead of time.
Unrelated, but what time do you land? Hopefully it is early enough to post up somewhere on the bay and watch all the different firework shows on the water.
Also if you only need data initially. Airalo can help, immediate e-sim for travellers
I used it for multiple countries including Canada, Portugal, UK, France and India
But it is a lot cheaper to buy a sim
Does anyone know if mobile Wi-Fi is rental an option for visitors here? I did that in Japan and really preferred it to messing around with SIM cards.
I think you might be disappointed that we don’t actually put French’s Yellow Mustard on literally every possible dish here
If you have t-mobile it worked fine there no extra cost just a tiny bit slow
Id consider buying a cheap phone and prepaid sim card at a grocery store. Even with your dad’s plan, I’d be nervous of some huge bill. I’d use the cheap option and have his as a backup.
1. Forget Verizon and ANY NVMO that uses the Verizon network! European phones usually lack the Verizon bands because Verizon is the most proprietary carrier who LOVES to use non standard tech (5GUW and CDMA looking at you….)
2. Between AT&T and T-Mobile Id pick TMobile simply because it’s the one network your phone is most likely to work on, AT&T loves to pull BS with whitelists like Verizon does
3. Be very careful using eSIM, it’s still very much a beta technology and it’s very likely something will break and you will have to spend hours on the phone with the carrier. From posts I have read it seems going from physical sim to eSIM causes the most problems