AT&T Community Forums

Vacation in California for 2 weeks

Hey guys,

I'll be visiting from the UK for 2 weeks shortly and I'm hoping to have mobile internet on my Samsung Galaxy Note II phone while I'm there. I'm going to be flying into San Francisco and hiring a car and spending at least a week in Yosemite National Park. I understand that only AT&T has decent service in this area, so I'm looking at an AT&T SIM card.

I'm really quite confused about what it is going to take to get a SIM card with data. I'm going to need a micro SIM to fit my phone. I'm going to be driving straight from SF to Yosemite. I've had a look online and I'll be driving past a number of AT&T stores, but I can't work out from all the 'noise' on the forum whether it's actually possible to walk into a store, get a micro SIM, and walk out with a working data connection. I probably won't really need to place phone calls but if I have to sign up for a plan that includes them, so be it. I won't have a permanent address while I'm in the US (but I can provide the address of a friend who lives in SF), and I'm arriving too soon to arrange for a SIM card to be sent to his address. Is it possible to buy one 'in store', or alternatively from a Walmart store or similar?

What problems with this scenario am I likely to encounter?

Do I have to pay for it by card (if so, does it have to match the address I've given!? My card is registered in the UK obviously) or can I pay by cash? I'm assuming from reading the forums and from what info I've gleaned from the AT&T website that the best way will be to pay for a $25 plan and then $25 for 1gb of data. I shouldn't need more than this amount of data.

Also, in buying the SIM and signing up for the $25 plan, does that automatically sign me up for a rolling monthly plan which I would need to cancel when I'm leaving the US, or does it only sign me up for one month and that's it?

Thanks for any advice. I apologise in advance if these questions have been answered dozens of times already, but it's been difficult to sort through the 'white noise' and some of the suggestions in other threads suggest buying a SIM online, which is not an option for me.

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ATTJulieCS

Former Employee

•

1.1K Messages

11 years ago

@diliff wrote:

Hey guys,

I'll be visiting from the UK for 2 weeks shortly and I'm hoping to have mobile internet on my Samsung Galaxy Note II phone while I'm there. I'm going to be flying into San Francisco and hiring a car and spending at least a week in Yosemite National Park. I understand that only AT&T has decent service in this area, so I'm looking at an AT&T SIM card.

I'm really quite confused about what it is going to take to get a SIM card with data. I'm going to need a micro SIM to fit my phone. I'm going to be driving straight from SF to Yosemite. I've had a look online and I'll be driving past a number of AT&T stores, but I can't work out from all the 'noise' on the forum whether it's actually possible to walk into a store, get a micro SIM, and walk out with a working data connection. I probably won't really need to place phone calls but if I have to sign up for a plan that includes them, so be it. I won't have a permanent address while I'm in the US (but I can provide the address of a friend who lives in SF), and I'm arriving too soon to arrange for a SIM card to be sent to his address. Is it possible to buy one 'in store', or alternatively from a Walmart store or similar?

What problems with this scenario am I likely to encounter?

Do I have to pay for it by card (if so, does it have to match the address I've given!? My card is registered in the UK obviously) or can I pay by cash? I'm assuming from reading the forums and from what info I've gleaned from the AT&T website that the best way will be to pay for a $25 plan and then $25 for 1gb of data. I shouldn't need more than this amount of data.

Also, in buying the SIM and signing up for the $25 plan, does that automatically sign me up for a rolling monthly plan which I would need to cancel when I'm leaving the US, or does it only sign me up for one month and that's it?

Thanks for any advice. I apologise in advance if these questions have been answered dozens of times already, but it's been difficult to sort through the 'white noise' and some of the suggestions in other threads suggest buying a SIM online, which is not an option for me.

@diliff wrote:

Hey guys,

I'll be visiting from the UK for 2 weeks shortly and I'm hoping to have mobile internet on my Samsung Galaxy Note II phone while I'm there. I'm going to be flying into San Francisco and hiring a car and spending at least a week in Yosemite National Park. I understand that only AT&T has decent service in this area, so I'm looking at an AT&T SIM card.

I'm really quite confused about what it is going to take to get a SIM card with data. I'm going to need a micro SIM to fit my phone. I'm going to be driving straight from SF to Yosemite. I've had a look online and I'll be driving past a number of AT&T stores, but I can't work out from all the 'noise' on the forum whether it's actually possible to walk into a store, get a micro SIM, and walk out with a working data connection. I probably won't really need to place phone calls but if I have to sign up for a plan that includes them, so be it. I won't have a permanent address while I'm in the US (but I can provide the address of a friend who lives in SF), and I'm arriving too soon to arrange for a SIM card to be sent to his address. Is it possible to buy one 'in store', or alternatively from a Walmart store or similar?

What problems with this scenario am I likely to encounter?

Do I have to pay for it by card (if so, does it have to match the address I've given!? My card is registered in the UK obviously) or can I pay by cash? I'm assuming from reading the forums and from what info I've gleaned from the AT&T website that the best way will be to pay for a $25 plan and then $25 for 1gb of data. I shouldn't need more than this amount of data.

Also, in buying the SIM and signing up for the $25 plan, does that automatically sign me up for a rolling monthly plan which I would need to cancel when I'm leaving the US, or does it only sign me up for one month and that's it?

Thanks for any advice. I apologise in advance if these questions have been answered dozens of times already, but it's been difficult to sort through the 'white noise' and some of the suggestions in other threads suggest buying a SIM online, which is not an option for me.

At this time, AT&T does not offer GoPhone data on 4G smartphones. You can get more information here.

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Wild Banchi

Master

•

10.2K Messages

11 years ago

You should be able to walk into an AT&T store and purchase a microSIM for your Note II. It will probably run you about $25 for the card itself, but they might waive the cost of the SIM card if you add money to your new account in-store. I would pay cash, preferably. Ask the employees there to set it up on a prepaid GoPhone plan, if they allow you to. They might try to give you a hard time and say that "this phone won't work on a GoPhone plan..." yadda, yadda, yadda. It should be able to work, as long as your phone is unlocked.

Now, as far as prepaid mobile data goes - I'm not sure if it will work right away. There may be some certain APN settings that need to be edited to allow your Note II to be able to use the AT&T prepaid data network. The employee(s) in the store might not bother to share the settings with you, so that could be a potential problem... I hope it works for you right away!

You will have to select a rate plan during the setup of your new account. If you don't think you'll be talking on your phone very much, then I would simply select the $0.10 per minute plan, where all phone calls cost just ten cents per minute. Text messages are $0.20 each on this plan, while picture messages are $0.25 each. You can then purchase the $25 1GB data package.

You shouldn't automatically be set up for auto renewal unless you want to. They employee(s) at the store may ask you if you'd like to enroll, but just tell them that you're not interested since you'll only be here for less than a month.

I hope this helps. Good luck!

0

adidaskid808

ACE - Professor

•

1.7K Messages

11 years ago

You don't need to play around with the APN setting on Samsung Note 2 to use mobile data . I think Smiley Indifferent APN is mainly for an Apple Ipad and phones.

My Note 2 is unlocked,I travel around , using Rogers and Bell in Canada, BB in UK , Digicel in Jamaica and T mobile USA without even need to touch the APN setting for using data.

But I need to change APN everytime on my IPad to use a different sim card in different country. Smiley Mad