ayg

I will be going to the Bahamas in a few weeks for a 7 days. I will be landing in Nassau and taking Southern Air Charter over to Long Island for the entire week. I would like to have cellular data service during my time there.

Can I get a T-Mobile SIM, open up a post paid account under their "Simple Choice" plan for $50 a month for voice and 2GB of data and then just cancel the service when I get home? I would assume this would cost me one month of service. The SIM cards are free online right now. I will be using this in an unlocked Samsung S7 Edge (AT&T branded) phone.

This seems like an easy to do plan. I searched thread on Travel Technology and haven't seen anyone asking if this scenario is possible. T-Mo does have 3G equivalent speeds on the island. They also claim to have no ETF or cancellations after their recent "Uncarrier" changes. This is much cheaper than using Mr Sim to get a local BTC sim + 1-2GB of service for $108 shipped. There are no BTC sims+service for sale on eBay like I've found in my Asian and Euro travels.

josephstern

Seems like it would work. But wouldn't it be simpler to buy the international data from AT&T for about the same price? No credit check that way either.

pseudoswede

Why not just buy a 1-week, 1GB pre-paid SIM from BTC for $10?

http://btcmobile.me/prepaid

dtsm

Yes, like they advertise, no contract, ETF, etc. You might have to pay for activation fee.

ewrfox

If you go before Aug 31, you'll get 4G speeds, after that its down to 2G. I looked at T mobile, they'll run a credit check before starting service..

pseudoswede

That's only in Europe (except Andorra).

ewrfox

Oh, I thought it was anywhere for the summer. I guess not.

dtsm

Promo is Europe only for July & August only. Hope they extend to September as we're visiting for a few days

Need

I would go with that too. Seems less trouble. $40 for 200mb is enough for a week unless you are streaming videos. It is nice to be able to keep your phone number and call/text your friends/family in the US too.

I wish AT&T would have Verizon's $10/day plan though.

gobluetwo

We have VZW and it was great for our trip to Canada ($2 per day!). AT&T's international plans are still very legacy and customer unfriendly in terms of pricing and and data/voice/text limits. To remain competitive, they're going to have to overhaul that offering sooner or later.

FlyingDoctorwu

I will say att at least has made some progress. Mexico and Canada data and voice roaming is free in mobile share plans 15gb and greater. I do agree they need to revamp their worldwide options...


Fdw

LordHamster

I got to take advantage of this in the UK and it was FANTASTIC.

I'm so spoiled by this full speed international roaming now that I'm seriously considering switching to Project Fi who recently announced full speed across all their member countries.

ayg

That would work, but getting a hold of a BTC sim seems to be challening. They're $40 on Mr Sim and totally absent on eBay & Amazon. I'm open to ideas.

I'll have a car on Long Island but the BTC Store appears to be half way down the island from Stella Maris where we'll be landing. There's little info if there's a shop in Nassau's airport that would sell a sim card to me before we got on the crop duster to Stella Maris. Very little info on the Internet about this.

This is the only time I've regretted canceling Google Fi and porting back to AT&T.

janetdoe

The Bahamas is one of the few countries that doesn't participate in the T-Mo international coverage, at least that was the case in November 2015.

At the NAS airport, you can walk over to the domestic terminal and there is a convenience store that will sell $10 pre-paid SIMs and $5 data reloads. They are not used to selling them and it took like half an hour for us to buy two SIMs and some data, because they wanted to make sure everything actually activated before we left. In hindsight, that -probably- wasn't necessary.

The Telco is state run and the official stores basically are only open during banking hours, as far as I could tell.

Also, don't open your own T-Mo plan if you know anyone who already has a Simple Choice plan. Most plans you can add additional lines for $10-$30 a month, and cancel the line when you are done. Plus you avoid the hard pull on your credit for opening a post-paid account.

pseudoswede

Bahamas was added in December 2015. Literally two weeks before our Disney cruise.

Cuba is now the only excluded country in the Caribbean.

Again, paying $50 for seven days of 128kbps service (plus hard credit pull) is probably not what OP really wants to do.