IP Pool Size on American Carrier SIMs: What One SIM Can See

Proxy advertisements love big numbers. Millions of addresses, thousands of cities, endless rotation. A real American carrier SIM works differently, and we would rather explain it than compete with numbers that mean nothing. This article describes where the addresses on your line come from, how many one SIM can see, why the same address comes back, and how to get more variety when a job needs it. It is written for buyers outside the United States who have not seen how American carriers assign addresses.

Where the addresses come from

Each carrier runs regional gateways. A gateway serves a large area, and it holds a pool of public addresses. When your modem opens a data session, the gateway gives the session one address from that pool. Many phones share each address at the same time through carrier-grade NAT. When the session ends and a new one starts, the gateway gives a new address, which may or may not be different.

So the pool is the carrier's regional pool. It is not a list that we own and it is not a list that any proxy seller owns. Its size is decided by Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile. It is large enough for millions of phones, but it is finite, and your SIM draws from the pool of the region where its modem sits.

How many addresses one SIM sees

In practice, one SIM that rotates many times a day sees dozens of distinct addresses over a day and hundreds over a month. Some repeat. A rotation can return an address the SIM used an hour ago. This is normal, because the gateway hands out whatever is free, and it does not remember you. The exact count depends on the carrier, the city and the time of day. We do not publish a number, because the carrier does not publish one.

What you can rely on is this: every address is a real American mobile address in the SIM's region, and every one is shared with real phones. For most jobs, variety inside one pool is enough. A price check from ten different Chicago T-Mobile addresses over a day looks like ten different Chicago phones.

Why repeats do not hurt most jobs

A website does not count how many addresses you used. It looks at behaviour on each address. A repeated address that carries normal traffic is simply a busy address, which is what mobile addresses are. Repeats become a problem only in one situation: a job that requires every request to come from a different address, with no exceptions. That is a scraping pattern, and a single SIM is the wrong tool for it. A pool product is the right tool there.

For account work, repeats are good. An account that logs in from the same carrier, the same city and a small set of addresses for a month looks like a real subscriber. Rotation for account work should be rare and between sessions.

Rotation controls on our lines

You can rotate by a link, by API, from the dashboard, on a timer, or by hand. There is no limit on how often. A rotation takes a few seconds, during which requests fail and should be retried. Nobody else uses your SIM, so nobody else rotates it. If you do not rotate, the address stays as long as the carrier keeps the session, often many hours on a busy line.

A timer rotation every few minutes gives a slow stream of fresh addresses from the regional pool. A rotation between batches gives a new address for each list of pages. Both are inside one city and one carrier. If the job needs more than one region, you need more than one line.

Getting more variety

Variety comes from three directions. More cities: we run hardware in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Phoenix, Miami, North Carolina and Boston, each with its own regional pools. More carriers: Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile use separate pools, so three SIMs in one city on three carriers draw from three pools. More SIMs: each extra line is another independent session on the pool.

A buyer who needs a wide spread can rent several lines across cities and carriers and rotate each one between batches. The cost is linear and known: 4G at $5 a day, $28 a week or $65 a month, 5G at $6, $31 or $75, unlimited data on each. Moves between cities are free, so the spread can change when the job changes.

What the big numbers in advertisements mean

A pool product counts every address its network has ever touched, often across many countries. The number is real as a count, but at any moment a small part of it is online, and the session on each address lasts minutes. A carrier SIM gives you a smaller set of addresses, all real, all mobile, all American, all in a known city, with a session that lasts as long as you want. Pick the product that fits the job, and do not pick it by the size of the number.

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