I am a non-resident alien (British) in the US for a few months (and
will be returning regularly over the next few years so happy for a
long term contract).  I am looking for a US mobile service provider
with reasonably priced calls within the US and which works anywhere in
the US (ideally without high roaming charges in other states).  I have
already got two tri-band handsets which work fine in US so just need a
SIM.  One of my current phones has my UK Vodafone SIM which roams to
US fine but is far too expensive for long-term use in US ($1+ per min
even for local incoming and outgoing calls), the other currently has a
Cingular pre-paid SIM but this only works in California and a few
other Western states so is not a long-term solution for me.

Is there any way of getting a normal monthly-billed mobile contract
without a US social security number, or am I permanently destined to
operate in pre-paid land?   I do have a US residential address that I
can use, and I can easily have the bills charged to an international
credit card. (I may be able to get a US resident to sign a contract
but use my credit card for billing, but I would prefer not to have to
do this).

Also, are there any US providers that don’t charge airtime for
incoming calls? (none of the UK networks charge anything for incoming
calls within UK which I suspect has led to greater penetration of
mobiles in UK compared to the US).

SEPARATE RELATED QUESTION:  I would also like to buy a satellite phone
usable anywhere in the world, even in the middle of mountain ranges
and oceans.  It would only be for emergency use, so don’t mind about
the per min cost of calls, but would like to minimise the monthly
rental + minimise the size of the handset that would need to be
carried.  What satellite phone service has the best worldwide coverage
and suitable cost structure?    I have a idea that some satellite
phones use any local mobile network if they find one rather than
always going through a satellite so as to reduce costs - this would be
good.

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Clarification of Question by dogbreath-ga on 10 Sep 2002 19:30 PDT

With the help of the very useful comments to the questions from
deadletchiapet, pne, hansg, and jlacour, I have been able to do some
more research myself since there was no formal answer to my question.
So I do not now need any formal answer to this question (general
“comments” would be great though if I have missed anything or some
other helpful suggestion).  Here is what I found so far…

The best deal and best coverage for my situation seems to be Cingular
Nationwide plan where they do not charge any roaming even for using
other GSM networks in US.  For someone like me in the US occasionally,
I can leave the billing on one of the lowest tariffs (say $29.99/month
for 250 anytime minutes/month) and ring up to increase it to a higher
number of minutes per month as soon as I arrive in the US each time.
The only problem is that without a SSN you have no credit rating in
the US, so you have to give Cingular a security deposit of US$750 off
your credit card (refundable 12 months later), in addition to your
normal monthly bill payments which are debited from your credit card.
You don’t need to sign up for a 1 or 2 year contract if you have your
own (unlocked) phone as I do - i.e. you can cancel whenever you want
in the future which is nice.  It takes 30 days for international calls
to be enabled on any new account, which is slightly annoying.
Although the Cingular website makes some comment that the phones must
be programmed by them for preferred roaming networks, this simply
means that you can use a “locked” phone from another network.   Any
normal “unlocked” tri-bank GSM phone should work I think.

I also investigated AT&T wireless and found that they don’t have that
much GSM coverage in the US as yet + there are roaming charges when
you are using other GSM networks in the US (even with the new $99.99
AT&T Wireless National GSM Charter Plan where they give you unlimited
anytime minutes for 2 years).  The only other network seems to be
T-Mobile (aka Voicestream) and they don’t seem to be any better than
Cingular Nationwide in terms of coverage or rate plans.


As for getting a satellite phone for all the locations where there is
no GSM network at all  (much of rural USA for example, not just the
Sahara desert!), I have concluded that the best deal for me is Iridium
since it really is truly global in coverage and is now quite
reasonable in price compared to before they went bankrupt ($1500 for
the Motorola 8505 handset, $20/m, $1.50 per minute outgoing calls to
anywhere in the world, incoming calls free).  The best deal I could
find on the Internet seemed to be from www.mobalrental.com since they
include a couple of high capacity Lithium Ion batteries in the price. 
A solar recharging panel may be nice option as well.

The only other satellite phones seem to be:
Globalstar (which looks a bit uncertain long term as they have not yet
gone bankrupt so still have lots of debt that Iridium does not since
recovering from bankruptcy) and they are really only present in
certain parts of the world like the middle east.
Inmarsat (lots of different names like Nera etc but all seem to use
Inmarsat satellites) - this was the original satellite phones which
have been around for ages and also support the high band width things
like ISDN (e.g. news crews use it to transmit video etc from around
the world I believe).  But the prices per minute appear to be
considerably more expensive than Iridium so not the right choice for
my requirement.

It would be good to hear any comments from current users of Iridium
sat phones on whether they get good call quality, etc

For your satellite phone question:
One provider that does just what you ask, that is it uses a local
network and then switches to satellite when it's out of the local
network range, is Thuraya (http://www.thuraya.com/). The downside is
that it only covers parts of Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and
Asia.

The only network that I'm aware of that covers the entire globe is the
Iridium network (http://www.iridium.com/).

AFAIK one reason why you pay for incoming mobile calls in the US but
not in the UK or, say, Germany is that in the US you can't tell from
the phone number which numbers correspond to mobile phones: there are
no reserved "area codes" (except in a couple of places such as New
York). Therefore, someone calling the number cannot be expected to
know it is a mobile phone, so they pay for a normal (possibly
long-distance) phone call and the difference must be borne by the
person called.

By contrast, in the UK and in Germany, mobile phones have separate
prefixes; therefore, callers can know ahead of time which numbers are
mobile. In those cases, the caller pays the higher rate. Just a result
of the way the numbers were designed.

I wasn't aware that a SSN was necessary for a cellphone account. I
wonder if that is merely for credit/collection purposes or by statute
for "security"/anti-crime reasons.

The only GSM carriers in the US are Cingular, AT&T (in the midst of
switching from TDMA and therefore may not have GSM coverage in your
area), and T-Mobile fka VoiceStream.

T-Mobile seems to have competitive rates that including roaming and
long distance.  They will also sign you up and just provide a SIM - no
requirement to buy their phone.  I'm not sure if you have to have a
SSN, but I did have to sign up for a 1 year contract.  I also am
billed automatically to my credit card so you should be able to avoid
prepay I would think.