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Carrier Which Carrier to use in New York for iPhone 5S

mjt57

mjt57

macrumors regular
Original poster
Aug 16, 2013
203
20
South Eastern Australia
I'm travelling to the US in July and will be staying in New York. Given that we'll be there for a month I will probably need to hook up with a local carrier.

Now, could someone recommend the best carrier for both performance on the data networks there, and cost, although that's really a secondary issue.

My phone is a 5S, Australian model, but I don't know what compatibility issues that there may be with the local NY carriers.

Thanks.
 
AT&T and T-Mobile are your choices

T-Mobile has 30-day prepaid plans for:
$50 (500MB data)
$60 (2.5GB data)
$70 (UNL data)

Not sure about AT&T's prepaid pricing

You should just be able to walk into a carrier store and purchase one of these plans and sim cards.
 
U can buy a prepaid sim from AIO wireless. It's really ATT. It's owned by ATT.

About $50/month. Unlimited talk/text. Plus around 2.5Gb data and no overcharges. Includes all taxes. Plus since it's official ATT subsidy. You get true iPhone support. And they even have physicial retail resellers stores all over New York City.
 

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Also have physical stores you can buy the sim from also.
 

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jav6454 said:
Go with AT&T, their network in terms of LTE has surpassed al carriers in the NYC area.
Click to expand...

The OP wanted a short term carrier. That means no credit check. So we should talk only about prepaid options.

Even if ATT and tmobile have "no contract". They still require either credit checks. Or u can skip credit checks but they require a more significant desposit.
 
aneftp said:
The OP wanted a short term carrier. That means no credit check. So we should talk only about prepaid options.

Even if ATT and tmobile have "no contract". They still require either credit checks. Or u can skip credit checks but they require a more significant desposit.
Click to expand...
Both AT&T and T-Mobile have prepaid plans which don't require a credit check.
 
Thanks for the responses, folks. It's appreciated.

I don't know if my iPhone 5s will work on NY's LTE service. So, whether it's LTE or 3G as long as the service is fast and has good coverage.

We'll be staying with family out on Long Island near the town of Centereach and will be staying in the City for a few days. So, whichever works the best for this we'll go with. Cost isn't an issue.

I still can't believe that you can get a phone or pre-paid without having to fulfill ID requirements. Here in Australia you can't get any sort of phone service without a 100 pts of ID (licence, credit card, utilities bill, etc.).

And as for cost, that list of what AT&T and T-Mobile offer is cheap compared to similar pre-paid offerings here in Australia.
 
mjt57 said:
Thanks for the responses, folks. It's appreciated.

I don't know if my iPhone 5s will work on NY's LTE service. So, whether it's LTE or 3G as long as the service is fast and has good coverage.

We'll be staying with family out on Long Island near the town of Centereach and will be staying in the City for a few days. So, whichever works the best for this we'll go with. Cost isn't an issue.

I still can't believe that you can get a phone or pre-paid without having to fulfill ID requirements. Here in Australia you can't get any sort of phone service without a 100 pts of ID (licence, credit card, utilities bill, etc.).

And as for cost, that list of what AT&T and T-Mobile offer is cheap compared to similar pre-paid offerings here in Australia.
Click to expand...

In the new york metro area, which includes Long Island, all of the carriers have appropriate coverage. Just have to find the appropriate prepaid plan.
 
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mjt57 said:
Thanks. Coverage aside, which has the better performing data network?
Click to expand...
Realistically speaking, your only choices are AT&T and T-Mobile (or one of their MVNO's). Better performing data network? That really depends. There are a lot more AT&T subscribers than T-Mobile so AT&T's network tends to be more congested. In areas where you get LTE coverage from both, chances are T-Mobile's network will be faster. That said, there are likely more areas with AT&T LTE.
 
AT&T or T-Mobile are your only choices for this situation. Both should have comparable performance to each other in NYC so it doesn't really matter.
 
Thanks folks.

I was speaking to someone who visited NY recently. He said that he had a pre-paid ATT SIM in his iPhone 4S and that the data performance was terrible, even though the signal had full bars. Eg. Facebook continually timed out and when trying to send an email it too was producing send errors.

When he was in one of the subway stations his phone automatically joined an ATT wifi network. But it wasn't much better, he said.
 
I switched to Verizon a couple months ago, but prior to that I was in NYC once a week with my T-Mobile iPhone 5. No complaints about service in the city and my girlfriend, who lives in Brooklyn, still uses T-Mobile
 
Izaiah said:
I switched to Verizon a couple months ago, but prior to that I was in NYC once a week with my T-Mobile iPhone 5. No complaints about service in the city and my girlfriend, who lives in Brooklyn, still uses T-Mobile
Click to expand...

Given what I've read here and what someone told me recently about AT&T, I might go with T-Mobile. I'll see what others are using when I get there, first.
 
iPhone 5S A1453 LTE

These are LTE frequencies for USA iPhone 5s model (used by AT&T and T-Mobile):
iPhone 5S A1453 LTE 700/800/850/900/1800/1900/2100

You can compare it with your iPhone 5S model. Most likely, LTE-4G will work for you!
 
Back from a thoroughly enjoyable holiday in the US.

Sadly, though, the 5S didn't perform very well on AT&T's network, particularly in parts of Manhattan.

I was seeing "4G" on the status bar, whilst my wife's Samsung Galaxy S5 was indicating "H+".

I'm told that this is the network service which sits below AT's LTE service in terms of performance. I should've seen "LTE" if the phone was compatible with AT&T's LTE service.

So, basically, the data side of things worked but bad congestion, timeouts and so on marred its overall performance.

Service wasn't too bad out on Long Island, though. But it has its blackspots where the locals have objected to cell towers being built in their backyards.
 
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