Bert Hyman wrote:
In .home.nl Frank
Slootweg wrote:

6. Americans don't quite grasp that SIMs can be put in *other*
phones.

Having a multi-band phone, I went to buy a pre-paid SIM. No such
thing in the US! You can only buy a SIM *and* phone. Duh! I
already *have* a (compatible) phone, *three* of them!

Both T-Mobile and AT&T sell naked SIM cards for their pre-paid services
in their retail stores. Those stand-alone kiosks you find in shopping
malls are often operated by independent contractors who might not know
what you're talking about though.

Hmmm! Before going to the US, I looked at AT&T's and T-Mobile USA's
websites. I didn't find anything like that on the AT&T site (Don't get
me started on AT&T sites.), and the T-Mobile USA site specifically said
that you could get SIM-only only via their website (and because that
required a US ship-to address, that was no option (not counting the
poorer (than AT&T) coverage)).

So now I'm the proud owner of a beautiful, but totally useless
(outside the US), AT&T GoPhone Nokia 2610 phone [1]. It cost me all of
US$ 19.99 (without tax, mind you (Don't get me started on the
without-tax thingie.)), so I'm not complaining. *And* it includes a charger
which is 110-240VAC (not 240VAC-only), so I can use it everywhere for
all my Nokia phones (albeit with plug-adapters, which are needed
anyway)!

[1] I *think* it's *dual*-band, not triple-band, with *both* bands being
the 'wrong' bands, if that's at all possible. Nokia has the bad habit of
not mentioning any specs (like these) in their supplied documentation,
so (AFAIK) there is no way of knowing which bands the phone actually
has.