Roaming in the USA

[scringle]

I am travelling to the US and have enabled Roam from Home but unsure if the USA is included - I keep getting directed to the EE website but my contract is still on a BT Mobile contract.

What are the options to Roam and the costs associated - can it be enabled on arrival via SMS?

Any guidance would be much appreocate

[ctrlz]

The help pages on BTs website look to be a mess of vague info and broken links. Prices may have increased from the last time I seen them, but calls in/out were around £1.30pm, SMS free to receive unsure of cost to send, and data is around £6/mb. 
You’d ideally need to enable roaming and adjust your spend caps before leaving. 
EE do offer a roaming pass for USA where you pay a monthly fee and get most/all of your allowances, may be worth a look if you’ve time to switch before leaving. 

[chrisjp]

The alternative is to get a local US SIM card and use that instead of your BT one. That'll normally be much cheaper than paying roaming charges, which can be extortionate

[Brucemeister5]

Another alternative would be to use an eSIM if your phone is able to facilitate them. I’m not permitted to provide any links on here, but they are becoming increasingly popular to cut down on roaming charges. They give you a data allowance in your chosen country and you can make calls using WhatsApp. 

[pddco]

Having just recently used an eSIM on a trip to the USA I can vouch for them being very easy to setup and use. And  far cheaper than roaming. Having installed / enabled the eSIM at home, the phone automatically switched over to it when I arrived in the USA. No messing about with SIM cards either. Useful to have Roaming as a backup though. Just in case someone calls you through a normal mobile call, though you will have to pay the extra charges of course.. Perhaps you could put a suitable message on voicemail to direct people to call the voip service instead?