mobile phone usage in the USA ?

Going on trip to USA in a few months. If I purchase a mobile phone that has the feature tri-band. Does that mean it will work there with other tri-band phones.

As long as your service provider has a roaming agreement with a US SP then a tri-band phone should work in the US to call any phone.

Terms & Conditions apply and if I were you I'd check them out. Enjoy your Trip!

BroadbandKen said:

Terms & Conditions apply and if I were you I'd check them out.

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In what way?

I recently moved to o2 and was not able to use my phone in the US. They wil not give you roaming until u have 3 months payments made. If you are with O2 make sure u check that u are set up for roaming before u go.

CCOVICH said:

As long as your service provider has a roaming agreement with a US SP then a tri-band phone should work in the US to call any phone.

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I'm not sure that's quite true.....a standard GSM phone will talk to a GSM phone, but not to a standard CDMA phone (which are polular in the US, but not in Europe)

a standard GSM phone will talk to a GSM phone, but not to a standard CDMA phone

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But surely US customers on a GSM network can call people on any network, including those on a CDMA network? Your phone only has to talk to the local switch, not the other phone. My landline phone knows nothing about GSM, but I can ring mobiles

There is an issue in that only one of the GSM bands supported by European tri-band phones is actually used in the US (hence the appearance of quad-band phones!). The common GSM band doesn't have quite as much coverage as CDMA, but you should be fine in the main cities. Roaming might be an issue as bsloe mentions, but if your phone is SIM unlocked you can get a cheap prepay SIM on arrival in the US.

a quick call to your service provider should provide you with your answer. I have used both o2 and vodafone bill pay in the u.s. without any major problem but i did ring there customer service to confirm that it would work in advance of departure.

For the US, a quad band GSM phone may be better than just tri-band, as some operators use GSM850 as well as GSM1900, Cingular Wireless for instance. Its similiar to Ireland where we have GSM900 and GSM1800.
The website http://www.gsmworld.com/index.shtml seems to be quite good as it lists gsm operators and their roaming partners with coverage maps.
Here is the entry for ireland:
http://www.gsmworld.com/roaming/gsminfo/cou_ie.shtml

If you're going to be in any urban areas then your normal tri-band phone that you use in Ireland will work just fine.
You will be able to call anybody, regardless of what network or phone they have.
If you wander outside of the urban areas though you will find that the reception is very sparse at best.
I worked a lot on the eastern seaboard and this is my experience from using a tri-band phone.
As mentioned above, ring your operator and ensure that you have roaming enabled before you go.