Phone questions for visit to USA

[Guest andybarker]

Hiya,

The missus and I are off to the States in January for an extended holiday, and would like any advice you may have about mobile phone usage. We will be there for around 4 weeks.

We would like to be able to call people within the US (visiting a fair few people), and also some easy way of calling people in the UK. Also would like to keep up with emails (the missus is self employed and can get twitchy if she hasn't read her emails for a while).

The current thoughts are to get a US SIM, and use that for internal calls. Then use Skype on a mobile over WiFi for international calls. As for email, use WiFi when we can.

Is there a sensible option to have a data plan for those 4 weeks so we can keep up with email over the phone network, rather than playing Hunt The Wifi Hotspot? I realise Skype over 3G is not a realistic option (or so I understand).

We have a few mobiles available to us with regards to working on the US networks. My T-Mobile Vario IV (HTC Diamond variant) is meant to be GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 and HSDPA 900 / 2100, and the missus has a Samsung i780 which is GSM 900 / 1800 / 1900 and HSDPA 2100. Could also take a HTC Universal with GSM900, GSM1800, GSM1900 and UMTS2100.

Any suggestions would be appreciated,