Should I get a New Cellphone before I leave for America?

Question

I live in New Zealand, and currently have a Vodafone, but want to change to a Telecom, so I get $10 txt, also none of my friends have Vodafone so its really expensive to txt them and they rarely txt me back.

If I buy a Telecom cellphone now, will I be able to txt my friends in New Zealand for the year I'm away, and will I be able to txt my new friends in America? I'm doing a highschool exchange, and don't want to waste my money on a phone I can't use, or one that will be too expensive to use.

What cellphone companies do people use in America anyway?

Answer 1

I'm not sure we have vodafone or telecom in america, at least not in widespread use. To text from US to NZ might be really expensive. The most popular cell companies in the US are sprint, t-mobile, verizon, cingular/at&t, or alltel (I might have missed a few). There's more, smaller companies, but theat might not be good for txting to NZ. You could try a prepaid phone? either that or get a really, really good long distance plan or phone cards. Better yet, you could get a compatible phone and just get a new sim chip in america.

Answer 2

If you buy an unlocked GSM phone with support for the North American GSM bands 850MHz and 1900MHz, it will work on Cingular and T-Mobile, as well as a few MVNO providers.



As most phones sold in the US market are subsidy locked, you'll find the only real market for prepaid SIM cards is on eBay. Prepaid phone service is usually sold here in retail stores as a complete kit which includes a phone, SIM card (for GSM phones only, CDMA phones are very popular here as well and do not use SIM cards) and some starter airtime. Specialty cell phone stores do sell just the SIM cards, but they're usually more expensive than buying one of the starter kits.



Depending on how you want to use the phone, you may just end up buying a phone while you're here.

Answer 3

my choice is CINGULAR and yes u will be able to txt peeps in america so i wud just do what u think to do but if u follow wut i said just get cingular and if u can get a gewd fone then u can take it back home with you