Buying a mobile (cell) phone & contract in the US

[TPerry]

I had no idea Sprint and Verizon were still CDMA.

I have a background in mobile telecoms (Orange, T-Mobile, Nokia, Lucent, Nortel, etc.) so was aware they were back in the day, but figured they would have switched by now.

Their "fallback" is CDMA (which is more widely used in the US than elsewhere). The LTE bands for Verizon are pretty healthy in the coverage areas of larger cities - but even now I hit 3G in some areas around my little town.
LTE is pretty much everywhere now (at least in partial locations in most cities) and usually the 3G fallback is good. If you are out in the rural areas then you will not likely have a signal, no matter if you are GSM or CDMA as the profit is not there for them to erect the towers.
Eventually CDMA will be a thing of the past and it will be all LTE - but there's the niggling issue of the cost to roll the towers out for great coverage over such a large area as the US is.

 

[Robust]

Useful info, thanks.

Verizon and Sprint sound like the worst bits of the mobile business - the kind of practices we had over here many years ago.

It's annoying that you can buy a device off Amazon but may not actually be able to use it.
Does metroPCS/T-Mobile have similar restrictions.

UK used to be a huge joke for mobile a few years ago. It's better now.

Personally, I'd not get screwed into a deal and do what you do here, there. I've heard bad about contracts, but I've never been in one.

 

[rainmotorsports]

Their "fallback" is CDMA (which is more widely used in the US than elsewhere). The LTE bands for Verizon are pretty healthy in the coverage areas of larger cities - but even now I hit 3G in some areas around my little town.
LTE is pretty much everywhere now (at least in partial locations in most cities) and usually the 3G fallback is good. If you are out in the rural areas then you will not likely have a signal, no matter if you are GSM or CDMA as the profit is not there for them to erect the towers.
Eventually CDMA will be a thing of the past and it will be all LTE - but there's the niggling issue of the cost to roll the towers out for great coverage over such a large area as the US is.

I kept meaning to throw that in there. VoLTE everywhere is the goal. Technically if the phone doesn't support or has volte turned off the CDMA isn't a fallback.

TMobile in some areas has superior LTE indoors due to band 12. 700mhz. However there is a caveat to VoLTE on band 12. You may often have no available fallback in a situation where band 12 is giving you otherwise perfectll coverage. TMo actually disabled support on a couple phones at first because of this and maybe e911 I forget?

 

[TPerry]

Yeah, the iPhone VoLTE really sucks around here.. once you lose LTE (which is in at least 1/2 the city) you don't get any phone service until LTE kicks back in. That's why I have it turned off.

 

[Paul B]

Back in 1994 when I started working for them, Orange was referred to as 0 range as they were on 1800mhz and had terrible penetration inside buildings, etc.

I remember being the only person I knew with a GSM phone - the only issue was it didn't work anywhere away from the office

 

[ManagerJosh]

I had no idea Sprint and Verizon were still CDMA.

I have a background in mobile telecoms (Orange, T-Mobile, Nokia, Lucent, Nortel, etc.) so was aware they were back in the day, but figured they would have switched by now.

If you purchase a universal iPhone (there are certain models that are considered universal), they are compatible with all carriers regardless if they use CDMA/GSM.

 

[Jake B.]

I've seen the stuff on the internet ... no way I'm stepping foot in a Walmart!

Definitely a fair statement. It's basically like stepping into The Walking Dead

That's the way I'm leaning at the moment - which is also what I do here in the UK.

Assuming your current phone is unlocked and you go with a GSM provider you can continue to use your current phone. A lot of American phone companies are finally switching to GSM

 

[Paul B]

My current phone isn't unlocked and it's ancient - I don't even have data available ...

So I'm finally going to get with the times and upgrade to something more modern. I may even ditch my wifi only tablet and go with a sim enabled one rather than phone (I rarely use my mobile phone currently).

 

[rainmotorsports]

Definitely a fair statement. It's basically like stepping into The Walking Dead



Assuming your current phone is unlocked and you go with a GSM provider you can continue to use your current phone. A lot of American phone companies are finally switching to GSM

Semi negative there ghostrider. Your 2G and 3G will probably work fine but there is almost no LTE support from UK phones. This is why most of the good unlocked pure models still have 2 models. Us and global. Different LTE band support.

Many global phones didn't work on tmobiles 3g. Including older world phones from Verizon. The Galaxy S3 only worked on 2g in the US while the s4 supported hspa 3g. The first gen Moto G global gsm variant didn't and that's probably 2 years old now.

 

[Kim]

I don't know anything about US phone products But....

Wow.. big move, I bet you guys are so excited, but nervous and anxious too.

Raleigh looks very nice online, I can't believe the Real Estate prices... so cheap!!! You will be able to buy a Mansion! (although I have no idea of "areas" lol
So much to explore too, it will be a busy and fun time checking out a new city, no doubt everything works differently to the UK, so will keep you on your toes for a while - but the Broganator will sort it out quick sticks I am sure!

Best of luck to all three of you, I really hope it is a wonderful move for you all

 

[Jake B.]

Semi negative there ghostrider. Your 2G and 3G will probably work fine but there is almost no LTE support from UK phones. This is why most of the good unlocked pure models still have 2 models. Us and global. Different LTE band support.

LTE worked fine on the Galaxy s4 I had bought in Germany, is that specific to UK phones?

 

[rainmotorsports]

LTE worked fine on the Galaxy s4 I had bought in Germany, is that specific to UK phones?

Every country has vastly different LTE deployments. In the US each carrier has to bid for their spectrum. Most of the new LTE deployments are on old frequencies they already had. So the way the FCC and carrier ended up with different frequencies to work with than another country may have.

There are 10 or more common LTE bands in the US and 10 or more overseas. There's is only a couple shared overall at this point in time. Qualcomm has at any given time a radio that supports most us bands and then most global bands. But additionally the phone has to have antennas and amps for those frequencies in addition to the radio.

 

[rainmotorsports]

LTE worked fine on the Galaxy s4 I had bought in Germany, is that specific to UK phones?

Now that I am home I can look up the current ones for a crossover and give a better explanation. At a glance Germany and a lot of europe use bands 3, 7 and 20 none of which are used in the US. However the phone you had isn't necessarily limited to just those bands. We would have to look up the specific variant model number to see which bands it supports.

The further along we get, the more often a given carrier varient of a phone will support the LTE band of another carrier in another country. Your phone might have worked on say 1 of AT&T's LTE bands but not any of T-Mobiles. Not every band is deployed in every city either so there is that. We have also gone from radios that support 4 bands of one carrier to nearly every band for a given region which helps a lot.

In the US for example we recently had some of the spectrum used for TV and other broadcasts repurposed for LTE. Now another country still using these frequencies for something will not have those LTE bands. T-Mobile bought up a 700mhz chunk for LTE Band 12. Band 12 is only used in North America save for one country I have never heard of.

Band 5 is used here for AT&T but its also used in south korea and austrailia. At a glance looks like Bands 2 and 4 are pretty common in the US. As 2g and 3g networks get refarmed we may actually get Band's 3 and 20 in the US like Europe but because of regulations and the fact Band 7 sucks, we wont ever get Band 7.

 

[whynot]

Customs (for heading back): If you are staying in the States for about a year, don't purchase anything expensive. They take their work at customs very seriously,

I don't understand that.
Don't you pay tax when you buy something?
If you did why is it that you have to worry about customs?

 

[rainmotorsports]

I don't understand that.
Don't you pay tax when you buy something?
If you did why is it that you have to worry about customs?

Well it's a way to turn cash into... Not cash. For the purposes of leaving the country with a large amount of value. Basically if I want to bring 100 grand in drug dealing profits back home we can start by buying jewelry. A bit of a stretch but hey I figured I would try and answer.

 

[EQnoble]

Things to consider:

Phones:

If you buy one online...make sure it has a clean IMEI, ask for the IMEI first and run a check on it, you can not activate a bad IMEI on any legit network here, buy a bad IMEI phone and you got yourself a new brick for your new home's planter bed wall. If you have a phone that is compatible for some reason make sure it is unlocked (in the US when you buy a phone from a provider and have paid it off or own it outright they have to give you the code o unlock your device so you have the freedom to take it to a new carrier and use their carrier bundle)

Tmobile is the way to go (check their service map), I have a plan/arrangement with them that allows me to add new lines with unlimited talk text and data for 40 a month per line. They also support wifi calling so if you are near a hotspot/router and aren't getting service for some reason you (when using wifi) will automatically route calls through tmobiles backbone which can be clutch in some cases. On top of all of this you can just pay X a month on your bill for your actual handset along with the bill and avoid the upfront cost.
​

Credit cards:

I would recommend getting Barclaycard there in the UK as they offer cards here as well so transferring your account should not be a big deal and you should be able to arrange it with them just before you leave.
​

Car Insurance:

Geico - NC is between the 4th and 6th cheapest for auto insurance and I believe has some of the lowest min coverage.​

 

[whynot]

Well it's a way to turn cash into... Not cash. For the purposes of leaving the country with a large amount of value. Basically if I want to bring 100 grand in drug dealing profits back home we can start by buying jewelry.

Fair, it depends on how large is LARGE?
As a tourist can I spend with my family 5-10K on not that expensive goods?
A good laptop and a good phone could cost 2K easily...

 

[Lawrence]

I don't understand that.
Don't you pay tax when you buy something?
If you did why is it that you have to worry about customs?

It has to do with paying duty. You need to be out-of-country for x amount of years before you are exempt from it, IIRC I believe it's fours years for Canada, that may have changed. Also, if you purchased a car, and four years later you want to bring it into Canada, you won't be able to until it has been "Canadianized".

 

[Liam W]

Just to satisfy my curiosity, do any of the US cell providers offer unlimited data?

On my 3 contract over here (SIM only, £20p/m (just under $30), I get all you can eat data (which is basically a cap of 1000GB), and 12GB inclusive tethering.

Just wondering what it's like over there...

Liam

 

[wedgar]

Their "fallback" is CDMA (which is more widely used in the US than elsewhere). The LTE bands for Verizon are pretty healthy in the coverage areas of larger cities - but even now I hit 3G in some areas around my little town.
LTE is pretty much everywhere now (at least in partial locations in most cities) and usually the 3G fallback is good. If you are out in the rural areas then you will not likely have a signal, no matter if you are GSM or CDMA as the profit is not there for them to erect the towers.
Eventually CDMA will be a thing of the past and it will be all LTE - but there's the niggling issue of the cost to roll the towers out for great coverage over such a large area as the US is.

Living in the Allegheny National Forest, we have fairly decent LTE coverage in towns and along the roadways. In the forest, well that's another matter.

I travel regularly between there and Georgia, and Verizon coverage is generally very good. There are some spots in West Virginia that don't have as good of coverage and the signal gets dropped, but usually Verizon works well.