I beg to differ; I'm currently paying something like y98 for set B, and have yet to go over any of my allotments, apart from SMS, which is cheap anyway. That's $15 for a plan that would cost $50 in the US or $60 in Europe. Second, you can occasionally buy some very good (i.e. far better than set B) two year packages on Taobao that come out to around $6 per month. Third, when I was in France last year, I found that China Mobile roaming was actually cheaper than the SIM I picked up there. Same goes for the US. I bought a prepaid SIM there, which was obviously targeted at people with bad credit, and the rates were simply off the charts. If you load y300 on China Mobile, you should be able to last a month in the US or Europe, as long as you don't go crazy.