Apeksman

Hi

I'm moving to San Diego and was wondering what advice i could get on mobile phone/internet contracts,
everything I read says how expensive they are - does anybody know the best deals?

civilservant

Pay as you go is going to be your best bet right off the boat with no credit score - any of the major networks (TMobile/Verizon/Sprint) should have excellent service in a major area like San Diego.

Pulaski

Verizon and AT&T have pretty much national coverage (though if you head out into the sticks (off highway/ interstate), or up a mountain, you are much more likely to lose connectivity than in the UK, but that is just a function of how big the US is, and how small the UK is), and even Sprint and T-Mobile (the other two of the "big four") are known to have more patchy coverage outside of cities. So be wary of great deals offered by smaller carriers - some of them have quite a small coverage area and/or roaming charges if you connect to service using another carrier when you are travelling away from home.

Hotscot

Phone and internet are not particularly expensive.
However San Diego certainly is. So...if you can afford to live there...

What brings you over and which area will you be in?
I imagine housing will be a far bigger issue than a cell phone.

petitefrancaise

I'd look at google fi - by far the cheapest and it will work when back in the UK

tom169

Very happy with my fi!

BenK91

I've been pretty happy with T-Mobile since I arrived. We have two lines and get free Netflix, and a few other little perks. (I can't remember what they are and I can't be bothered to Google)

Also, I'm currently back in the UK and not being charged any extra for using my data. The only thing that costs is SMS which are 25cents a piece (I've turned it off anyway as I have an iPhone and if someone wants to SMS me, they can WhatsApp me ).

shiversaint

Cricket and Mint are reliable and good value SIM only providers.

Be wary if you have a more modern iPhone - you'll find the US networks use two different technologies and Apple stopped putting the chips in iPhones to deal with both techs in phones not specifically purchased in the US with the intention of being used on that network. Sprint is one of the culprits, I think Verizon is the other one. They both use CDMA. Rest of the world is essentially exclusively on GSM. In simple terms, if you want to use an iPhone from abroad and it's newer (I think model 7 and up), you'll need to go with T-Mobile or AT&T. Mint piggyback off T-Mobile so that's fine to use.

There is no doubt that Google Fi is extremely high quality, but it is by no means the cheapest when compared to Cricket and Mint.

Ozzidoc

Word.

Pulaski

​​​​​​​There may be elements of truth in this, but Verizon has been phasing out its usage of CDSM, and has been for some years, in favour of LTE (which is the successor to GSM, in the US and around the world), which is the technology used by AT&T and T-Mobile. I am not sure what Sprint is doing, but I think they may be phasing out CDMA too.

Giantaxe

CDMA is gone from Verizon at the end of this year:

https://www.verizonwireless.com/support/knowledge-base-218813/

​​​​​​​It's only been supporting it this long to allow those with "legacy" devices to be able to continue to use CDMA.