<p>Here's the deal - from August 29th I will live and learn in Boston. Originally I come from Poland. What I would like to get to know is pretty simple - are there any obstacles for international students when it comes to handling ordinary matters like establishing a bank account or getting a mobile phone and whatever else comes to your mind. I mean, we do not have a permanent US address nor Social Security number. </p>
<p>Perhaps there is someone here who is already studying in US and could clear things up?</p>
<p>You won’t be able to set up a savings account until you get a SSN, but a chequing account should be no problem. Cell phone companies may have some restrictions/requirements regarding contracts (not too sure, I’ve always done monthly pay-as-you-go type plans) You’ll also find it difficult to apply for a credit card (impossible without an SSN, and even with one it’s hard b/c you haven’t established a history) but most banks will give you a debit/check card which essentially functions as a credit card but pulls funds directly from your account.</p>
<p>To create a bank debit card, you need a domestic phone number (either cellphone or home)
To get a cellphone contract, you need a card, and you would have to put $400 deposit which will be mailed to you in a year (with some interest) for the contract as an international student.</p>
<p>What I did was use a friend’s card to get a cellphone and then set up a bank account with debit card using the cellphone number</p>
<p>By “Pay-as-you-go” you mean I can choose to pay from September till April, not pay over the summer and activate my phone again next Fall? It’d be perfect, I did not know they had such plans. Every major network has something like that? </p>
<p>Kvasek, I believe Pay as you go means you pay when you run out of or low on credit - but there might be regulations against holding an inactive number for a period of many months.</p>
<p>Drelnis is right that you might lose your number if your account is inactive for too long. However, most providers will keep your number active if you top up $20 every 3 months or so (you can use that balance after the summer). Personally, I highly recommend the Beyond Talk plans by Virgin Mobile if your area is covered by Sprint. They are the cheapest monthly plans I know of, pre-paid or not, and they come with unlimited text, data and web!</p>
Yes, that’s what’s meant with “pay as you go”, although the American prepaid plans are a bit more flexible than the European plans I am familiar with. For example, there are pre-paid monthly service plans that work just like contracts, except that they can be terminated at any time and you have to pay the monthly charges in advance (instead of getting a bill at the end of the month).</p>
<p>Wow, thank you. I did look Virgine Mobile up and as a matter of fact they do charge only $25/month for 300 minutes and unlimited text and data plan. Meanwhile the cheapest option that I saw on AT&T was $60 and it was the one with 200mb data plan. Besides it is much more flexible, which is what I want.
I was thinking about AT&T because of iPhone, which I am used to and with which I am satisfied, but VM offers BlackBerry, which is also commonly praised. Oh, and as for coverage I assume there should be no problem with Boston.</p>
<p>Thanks guys, you might just have helped me save few hundred bucks a year.</p>
<p>Edit: One more thing. What about tethering in VM? I cannot find information on website. Can I do it, do they charge extra or is it all within data plan?</p>
<p>Re terminating VM: you will get an online account where you can make changes to your service anytime you want. You can choose to terminate your service completely over the summer (but then you might lose your number) or you can temporarily switch to a pay-per-minute plan with no monthly fees (your service would stay active as long as you add $20 to your account every 3 months, which you can use towards the monthly plan later). There’s no penalty for switching back and forth or for terminating your account completely.</p>
<p>I just saw your edit: I have not tried tethering myself, but I have read that you cannot do that with a VM phone (otherwise they would probably run into trouble with cheap unlimited cell phone web). By the way, the AT&T network is said to be pretty congested in metropolian areas because of the increasing popularity of iPhones and iPads. In fact, AT&T has recently discontinued unlimited mobile web plans for exactly that reason.</p>
<p>Thanks. Anyway, wi-fi will be wildly available on my campus and anything away from there could probably be handled using a phone, so thethering is not such a big deal, but it would come in handy. </p>
<p>Yeah, I have read a lot about AT&T and it’s problems with managing all the data transfers. Anyway, it seems now that VM would much more sens to me (well, like ~$400-500 more sense per year) to me than using any other major network like AT&T, Verizon etc.</p>
<p>I use Virgin Mobile too, and it’s definitely the cheapest plan I’ve been able to find. Occasionally I have some problems with receiving text messages (i.e. I don’t receive the messages until several hours after they were originally sent; a friend of mine also with VM had similar issues) which can be irritating…but I see it as a relatively minor inconvenience when compared to the monthly bills I would have with other services.</p>
<p>Sorry for bumping this thread up but does anyone know how reliable The Virgin Mobile coverage map is? it shows good coverage for my area, but since I live in the middle of Iowa I have a hard time believing it.</p>
<p>The map seems to be pretty reliable in the Philadelphia area. The coverage gap in one corner of my campus does appear on the map. In my experience, “good” coverage = 1-2 bars (outdoors, less inside - barely enough to make a phone call). You want “best” coverage in the area you spent the most time in.</p>
<p>It’s not actually surprising that you get coverage in Iowa. I would expect that bigger towns and cities (and certainly college campuses) have a tower nearby, but that you lose reception as soon as you get away from human conglomerations. Try zooming out of the coverage map and you will see what I mean.</p>
<p>By the way, Virgin Mobile operates on the Sprint network. Maybe some of your friends at school can give you a first-hand account of the coverage situation?</p>
<p>I’ve asked around and apparently the coverage is not the greatest on the Campus, even though the map says it’s best. One of my friend told me he cannot make calls or receive text messages in many buildings on Campus. I’ve heard the same about the At&t network. Really only Verizon seems to be working everywhere around here. I never had any problems with my old phone that used the Verizon network, but I want to switch to another provider. </p>
<p>Hey! I am a student from France and I have been living and studying in Boston for almost 5 years now. The best advice I would give you is to find a job on campus even a couple hours a week - language department, international student buddy,anything just to get a social security number. I worked as a french tutor sophomore year and I had to get a social it was THE BEST THING I ever did and it was random I did not even know it at the time!</p>