Let me give a little background regarding my skepticism. This wasn’t my first time going to the US with a temporary phone; last time I ended up with an old style candy bar phone. You know those NOKIA phones, great reception but I missed my smart phone. Travelling around the US for meetings looking for a WIFI hot spot in order to get online was one of the most annoying aspects of my trip.
Using the “dumb phone” was a hell of a lot cheaper than the roaming charges I got hit with on my previous US bound trip. Don’t get me started on the roaming issue. My local carrier sold me this “cheap” all inclusive roaming in the US package. I bought the roaming rubbish, “don’t worry there will be no additional charges” the mobile rep reassured me. Well $1,500 and 2 years later I am still fighting the charges. So there you are, my global roaming skepticism in a nut shell.
Fast forward to this last trip. Here I was sitting in the Business lounge sipping my espresso wondering if this time will be any better. About two weeks before this trip I was reading some of our TelAway clients reviews. “BEST USA SIM CARD with Unlimited DATA” said John from Montreal.
J.Mac from Scotland added "The service was absolutely excellent!!! As soon as I landed and inserted the SIM card, all the features were working properly”. No small print, they promise a plug and play SIM card for US travel.
One of the better features that we offer is a local number to forward my mobile phone to in order to get all my local calls in the US. So I set up call divert from my android phone and made a test call. IT worked.
“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome JFK Airport. Local time is six am”
It was the moment of truth, I took out my TelAway SIM popped out my SIM and inserted the TelAway USA SIM into the phone.
Video credit mypcblewup
My SIM replacement surgery was interrupted by the captain once again
“We remind you to please wait until inside the terminal to use any electronic devices”
Screw this I thought to myself the FAA is full of crap. I will turn on my mobile phone when I am ready. I finished the SIM swap crossed my fingers and booted my smart phone.The land of the FREE and hopefully unlimited calls with 3g data on my prepaid US sim card I thought to myself. Yes it worked! I can see on my Android phone that I have reception, I tried to get a quick peek on my Facebook app so I can notify all my FB friends that I have arrived in the US and can be reached locally on my US number.
Crap the DATA is not working. Now what do I do? I knew this was too good to be true. I need my DATA to work in the USA, maybe my phone wasn't unlocked? Was it not SIM free? It must be unlocked I can see that I have reception. I searched through my emails confirmation from TelAway and found a very user friendly guide to trouble shooting getting online. Turns out that if the DATA doesn't work automatically I need to change APN settings to work 3g DATA on the US carrier.
By the time the captain announced “On behalf of the Airline and the entire crew, I’d like to thank you for joining us on this trip and we are looking forward to seeing you on board again in the near future. Have a nice day” I was on ONLINE, yes it worked! That was easy.
Later that night I uploaded some great pictures from Time Square. The next step was to actually speed test the USA sim card see if Almost 10 Mbps download speed great Ping to server.
This USA sim a great option. It was a plug and play, a little configuration and the Speed test was great. I was happy to test out our USA SIM card and see that the TelAway reviews were correct.
