Going along with QuasiSteve's message, I too recommend a local pre-paid local cellular service when traveling to America. Price gouging on roaming can get extreme, on both sides of the pond (American cell companies screw us on roaming in Europe too). And indeed, I'd also recommend buying a local phone with it if you don't mind having a third phone on you.

I've often suggested TracFone to my various European friends when they visit. It's a GSM reseller that sits on top of AT&T's network, so you get widespread national coverage, and it's extremely cheap. You can buy a phone (which usually includes 20 minutes of service to start with) for as little as US$10. You can refill the minutes via a telephone number, their website, on the phone itself through menus, or by going into most any store and buying a 'minutes card' (TracFone's minutes cards can be found in almost any grocery and convenience store or gas station, and most any consumer store that has an electronics section). Much like Steve's suggestion, going into a physical store is the easiest when using a foreign credit card (and it's the only way to buy using cash), but since such a WIDE array of stores sell their cards it can hardly be called an inconvenience.

The other primary reason I suggest it? Privacy. Sure, your two existing phones may work with T-Mobile's or AT&T's networks (their 2G/GSM networks work with most any GSM phone, but their 3G networks operate on wholly incompatible frequencies and most phones usually only support one or the other), and you could get pre-pay service with them if your phones are SIM unlocked (I would figure they are). However, the big telcos require a bunch of personal information to sign up for their service. Admittedly, I haven't used T-Mobile in a long time, but I was recently using AT&T's pre-pay and they insist on your full personal details, name, address, all that sort of thing. TracFone doesn't ask for jack unless you use their website. If you buy the phone and minute cards at stores it's completely anonymous.

The anonymity also means TracFones are very easy to sell off when you're done with them, though being so cheap they're generally not going to sell for much unless you've still got a lot minutes left on them. They're basically disposable phones. My friends usually just drop them into a local cell phone recycling box when they're leaving for home. Stores like Best Buy have these, which probably will be one near you if you're visiting major cities.

Yes, note the part I conveniently highlighted for you. I'm well aware that desktop/laptop Macs have no problem installing competing browsers. By "tablet and such devices" I was specifically referring to iOS devices, which are a different story.

Apple doesn't manage to "get away" with anything. Bundling Safari with OS X is substantially different from bundling IE with Windows, and do not try to confuse the two.

OS X comes on Apple hardware, which Apple manufactures, and you're free to not buy such Apple hardware. Third-party sellers of the "authorized Apple reseller" type are also free to sell you other hardware, not just Apple hardware. This is in fact one of the biggest differences of all, since Microsoft is a purely software company that does not produce its own hardware (in the computer biz anyway, I know they make some peripheral hardware).

Back in the day (and far more recently than just the IE case itself, really), MS's contracts with OEMs were vastly different. Windows came on everything. Microsoft didn't make its own hardware at all, but it made sure everyone else's hardware came with Windows. OEMs had to sell Windows pre-bundled, and they weren't allowed to offer you competing OSes due to the nature of their contracts with MS (remember the days before Dell sold RedHat Linux systems?). HP computers came with Windows and IE. Dell computers came with Windows and IE. Acer, IBM, Compaq.. you get the picture. It didn't matter WHAT brand you bought, they all came with Windows and IE. This not only was a problem for Netscape and the other browsers, but was also a problem for competing OSes, and remained so well after the Netscape case. Not just Linux, but many other operating systems that have come and are now more or less gone in the same manner as what happened to Netscape, like OS/2 and BeOS. In fact litigation from Be was one of the things that helped bring this OEM contract bullshit to light, though like Netscape before it, it came too late to save Be. Litigation from IBM over the OS/2 debacle is famously well-documented and I shouldn't need to explain it. Dell itself also brought litigation alongside RedHat.

As for tablet and such devices, yes it's true that Apple ones come with Safari and generally make it difficult to install other browsers (though they are now available, if in more limited quantity and not quite the same as the 'native' on-device Safari browser). However, those are Apple devices, not, say, HP devices with iOS on them. You're free to buy non-Apple devices. Just like if I bought a Microsoft-made Zune, I'd expect it to come with IE only. Yes I realize these days "Windows phones" aren't made by Microsoft. However, I can buy a Motorola with Windows Phone, or I can buy a Motorola with Android, or.. Yeah.

So please, don't compare apples to oranges (ha). Apple's no saint to say the least and they do pull a lot of ugly shit, but the "Safari bundling is the same as IE bundling!" line is old, tired, and it's bullshit.

You don't have to be an idiot for a picture to be a problem. After all, there was the somewhat recent case (even featured here on Slashdot, sorry I'm too lazy to dig up links) of the kindergarten teacher that was fired over a photo of her at a party, drinking from a cup that allegedly contained alcohol (gasp). She was of course legal, and was doing nothing unusual, merely smiling and drinking, but it was deemed "inappropriate" for her position, whatever the fuck that means.

There's a plethora of such cases. Or the numerous stories (again, featured on Slashdot too) of companies that troll social networking sites (or employ third parties to do so for them) to look up info on applicants and potential hires. Simply being at a party, drinking, is often frowned upon as the companies have outright stated when interviewed on this subject. There's also the issue of not everyone in your social circle may respect your wishes about no pictures (yes, I think that makes them jackasses), and this is especially true of parties where attendants may not all be your personal friends. Friends of friends, acquaintances, the types that are even more especially likely to not know and/or respect your picture wishes.

All of this, of course, are symptoms of a much larger blight on our society, but nonetheless, the point still stands: a picture of you drinking at a party does not necessarily have to show you being an idiot, to affect your life. Especially your professional life.

AT&T laid off 6000 people just this past spring (in April they announced they'd made 5,900 cuts during the first quarter, but I don't have the press release handy). Between 2006 and 2010, they've cut over 37,000 jobs. Plus as you say, how many would get the chop during the merger to "eliminate redundancies in the workforce" as one of the favored sayings goes.

So yeah I'm with you, "bringing back" 5,000 call center jobs (which I'd be willing to bet only pay close to minimum wage, too) would be an insulting token gesture, at the very best.

True enough: the easy way would simply be to not have a cell phone. The practical way? Not so much. I actually make use of it for my day-to-day needs. Yes, yes, twenty years ago we all made do without cell phones and didn't think a thing of it and life went on. We aren't living twenty years ago though. A century ago we made due without telephones at all; is that the easy way too?

Here in my area, I have a choice between AT&T and Verizon. That's.. it. No Sprint. No T-Mobile (well, okay, it sort of works here). No smaller providers like MetroPCS (though they're looking to come here soonish, at least). Verizon is just as well known for requiring onerous plans and expensive data packages, and most certainly, their pre-pay is absurdly unreasonably priced (and that's even compared to AT&T!).

I'm on pre-pay, and I have no contract. It's not so much obnoxious contract terms as obnoxious business practices. I don't like doing business with the devil but my choices are limited.

So, yeah, it's quite a revelation that one certainly could choose to go without AT&T service, but going without cell service isn't quite the "easy way" it once was. Plus the idea that one might have a plethora of other options to choose from, everywhere in the land, is studiously ignoring the reality of the U.S. cellular "market".

Another piece of the answer is: pre-pay and pay-as-you-go plans.

AT&T is well-known to use a database of IMEI numbers to detect iPhones and other smartphones, so that it can force them onto specific plans and to require the addition of expensive data packages. This also includes entirely rejecting detected smartphones straight off of pre-pay plans and requiring them to go post-pay only, though they just this past April finally added a pre-pay smartphone plan (however, only a single AT&T-branded smartphone is currently "authorized" to use it!) However, their database almost exclusively consists of AT&T-branded or otherwise carrier-locked-to-AT&T phones.

Thus, it's also rather well-known that non-AT&T-branded phones, and iPhones from other regions (purchasing unlocked iPhones from Canada where they've been available direct from Apple for a long time is not uncommon in the States), are rarely if ever detected. I fully suspect that these unlocked U.S. iPhones that Apple is now selling directly are similarly not on AT&T's IMEI list. This is good for people who don't need an expensive airtime plan or data package (hey they have wifi for data; not everyone needs a constant cellular connection).

I've got quite a few friends with non-AT&T iPhones on AT&T's pre-pay, without issues. Hopefully now, when they desire to upgrade their hardware, they won't have to go through the trouble of importing or otherwise doing any magic handwaving in order to get a phone they want while avoiding the smartphone detection.

I'll politely leave off the rant about what greedy, rip-off bullshit it is that AT&T has such detection systems, or that anyone should EVER have to go to such trouble to avoid a thing like that.

Which they do, extensively, and have for years. Think of all the commercials for performance cars that show speeding (indeed outright racing), drifting, stunt turns, etc. through the middle of a city's downtown/urban center. All underlined by the tiny print "Professional driver on a closed course. Do not attempt." Think they'd honor their warranty--or for that matter an insurance company honor their contract--if you went out and actually used the car the way they show in their commercials and had a wreck?

Sigh, replying to an AC, but...

It is the land of laws indeed, except the court in this case ruled against those laws, not in favor or "according" to them. Had you actually RTFA'd, you'd have seen that California has consumer protection laws that ban this sort of practice. All the lower court rulings upheld California's state laws. AT&T continued to push it higher and higher to get their favored ruling. The Supreme Court most certainly did have plenty of latitude in the law's interpretation, as their ruling was that the Federal Arbitration Act takes precedence over California's own state laws.

Yes, this is yet another ruling that very explicitly overrides the sovereignty of states' rights in favor of federal. In fact, quoted right there in TFA, is Justice Breyer's dissenting opinion that, quote "[R]ecognition of that federalist ideal, embodied in specific language in this particular statute, should lead us to uphold California's law, not to strike it down."

But the erosion of states' rights and sovereignty is certainly nothing new, particularly to California itself. The application of federal interstate trafficking laws to medicinal marijuana grown and sold entirely within the state of California was another huge example of the Supreme Court's willingness to trample state sovereignty.

Actually I use no data, and have no data plan at all. I certainly wouldn't be on PAYG if I needed lots of data, I'd just be screwing myself over going that route.

And people who simply use a phone so rarely (but need the available-anywhere nature of cellular when they do need to make that phone call) that PAYG is as much as ten times cheaper than post-pay. I pay less than $100 per year for my PAYG service, which gets used mostly when I travel (hence being cellular comes in handy), but I like maintaining service so I have a fixed phone number.

It is not only still in effect, it applies to bring-your-own phones as well, not just the ones they sell you. You can buy your own unlocked smartphone and if they detect it as a smartphone (they do this by IMEI database last I heard, so not all smartphones will get detected) on their network, they will force a data plan on you. They will literally just add the "service" to your account and begin billing you.

Pre-pay customers will be forced into monthly data packages too, or in some cases certain smartphones are blocked from pre-pay entirely and can only be used post-pay.

I would actually like to live without it. I'm one of those rare, freakish people (at least, that seems to be how I'm regarded based on how the plans seem to work..) who would actually like to have a smartphone for local use (to use basically as a PDA as well as a normal phone) but don't need, want, nor care about always-on data access. What data I might use I can already achieve with available wifi networks (like at home), which 99.9% of the smartphones on the market now can utilize.

The problem? I CAN'T choose of my own volition not to pay the exorbitant fee. The big boys (and many of the smaller carriers too) require a data plan if you have a smartphone. AT&T and Verizon will flat out force one on you if you don't sign up for one yourself, and will just begin charging you (how this is legal is beyond me). This applies to both post- and pre-pay customers alike. In fact AT&T will just outright block some smartphones from being on pre-pay at all, period. They require them as post-pay only, with the high-cost data plan attached.

Some of us might actually like to live without a data plan; we just aren't allowed to have what we desire. Do I consider a smartphone a human right? No, of course not. However, I do think it ought to be MY choice to own one without using cellular data on it, if I want to use it that way. Unfortunately that is not a choice readily on offer in this closed "market".

As already pointed out in other comments Wal-Mart just resells T-Mobile network access.

As for MetroPCS, it has already been reported that their "unlimited" internet is actually a subset of Internet access. They actively block streaming sites, VoIP, and other things. In their base plans they even block IM networks and the like. They use a tiered pricing system. Base for SMS, talk, some web and YouTube. Next tier, IMs and e-mails. Next tier, audio downloading/streaming, etc.

The reality is the "deal" is no better than what the big boys are offering, and in some cases significantly worse.

Though unfortunately for many customers (the majority I'm sure), "who they want" is a choice between that ISP or nothing, so it doesn't help them too much to simply tell them hey, they're getting screwed.

However, I would like to see this broken down into smaller areas. By region, or even by city, rather than just the ISP as an overall average. I'd be very, VERY curious to see if the very same ISP performs significantly better in areas where there's some actual competition going on.

That would be nice to wave around "look here, here's measured evidence of what they're doing in areas they don't have to compete".

As an aside, I already kind of see this in my area. I have Time Warner broadband. In my personal location, they're the only choice; even DSL is not available to me. The highest service available is 15Mbps and I average 5-8 most of the time. However, in the sections where Verizon FiOS is also available and competing? Why, suddenly Time Warner's got a 50Mbps service available which averages 35-40! Imagine that..