I stand corrected on the data.
However some of these do offer data. I guess it depends on how much data the OP needs. I'm not sure how much voice the OP needs stating a small amount means different things to different people, again, ymmv.
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Best prepaid plan for iPhone 3G
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I stand corrected on the data.
However some of these do offer data. I guess it depends on how much data the OP needs. I'm not sure how much voice the OP needs stating a small amount means different things to different people, again, ymmv.
Read UP, all the answers have been answered in the previous page. I'll summarize:
Option 1 - T-Mobile, EDGE ONLY DATA, $70 a month minimum
Option 2 - AT&T, $60 a month for 300 mb 3G data, that's the max u can buy.
There's no good option for 3G on a prepaid account. Best option is to do a month to month\no commitment contract, so you can get the regular plan and cancel without penalty. You gotta go to a store for that.
Doesn't simple mobile give you unlimited everything with a 1GB limit on data for 60?
There's lots of fine print and details with them. It's $60 for unlimited text\talk\web, but they're using T-Mobile, so the best you'll see on an iPhone is edge, and it's only on the core T-Mobile network, so if you're out of their owned towers and on a partner you won't have data.
Overall if you want voice\text, simplemobile is great, but for data, it's really not a viable alternative IMO... might as well go directly to T-Mobile if you're going to be stuck on edge.
I have Truphone, and data is there but really slow. It's on T-Mobile network, so on EDGE only (since you have an iPhone, incompatible with T-Mobile's 3G frequencies).
H2O is advertising upcoming data plans, maybe in a month or so. They're using AT&T network, which is a lot nicer if you have an iPhone (don't have to jailbreak, can use 3G). They're restricting international calling only on their Minutes plan (expensive full price international rates) or the most expensive $49.99/month plan, whatever that's called (but then international rates are like on Google Voice - cheap). Depending on when you travel and what countries you want to call while in the US, H2O might be an option.
In addition to simple AT&T prepaid with data.
Before buying any minutes, I would try callingmart.com website, they usually have discounts when you need to top up prepaid accounts. I never had any issues with them.
I'm curious, has anybody had any problems with AT&T wanting to cancel their prepaid accounts or giving them grief since they know you're using an iPhone?
Transferring my current T-Mobile prepaid number (when I run the account down to $0) over to AT&T prepaid and then having it closed/cancelled would be not good at all.
I'm hoping ideally I would call AT&T to activate the microSIM that came with my iPhone 4 (bought second-hand locally from a guy who didn't like it and was switching to a different phone) to use as a prepaid SIM. I just don't want to have to cut any normal SIM before I can use it.
Transferring my current T-Mobile prepaid number (when I run the account down to $0) over to AT&T prepaid and then having it closed/cancelled would be not good at all.
I'm hoping ideally I would call AT&T to activate the microSIM that came with my iPhone 4 (bought second-hand locally from a guy who didn't like it and was switching to a different phone) to use as a prepaid SIM. I just don't want to have to cut any normal SIM before I can use it.
They will not cancel a prepaid account simply for using an iPhone with it.
I was using an original iPhone and an iPhone 3G for over seven months and AT&T never cared. I had even managed to have them add the $19.99 unlimited data plan onto it last September stating that I wanted it to use on my iPhone. I sold that sim card to someone several months ago and they are still using it today on an iPhone.
+1 for callingmart. If you're looking for to-up for any of the US Carriers, use them, but subscribe to their fan page on facebook because they run a 10% off coupon almost always... so really $100 is about $88 with their discounts, and they sell about any global carrier's top-ups, so I buy my Eur and Asian refills from them as well. I don't work for them either ;-)
Give them grief? If anything they'll give you a hug and a kiss and a thank you, for being willing to pay them $20 a month for 100 mb of data when you could be paying them $15 for 250 mb... hehe. Don't for a second think you're getting one over on them, they're making BANK on their prepaid data customers at 20 cents per MB.
Now you have me curiosified... haha... what's the actual name of the grandfathered plan? I'd love to give it a go at trying to get them to add it to my account.
hehe. Don't for a second think you're getting one over on them, they're making BANK on their prepaid data customers at 20 cents per MB.
You would think, but logic has very little to do with their decisions, it seems. I've been on T-Mobile prepaid (so much cheaper at $0.10/min than AT&T, cheap SMS but terrible coverage), and this year they started to exclude iPhones from any data. No sidekick plans, no new prepaid data options $1/hour that they finally came up with. Nothing. It's like they're busy being scared of iPhones instead of trying to figure out a way of being paid.
P.S. Hehe, I never understood why I pay for incoming calls/sms. Somebody has something to say/write to me, it's their business
Just venting Good point. I always try to apply logic, reason, common sense, but then I have to remember it's AT&T we're talking about. Rather than spending $$ to expand the capacity of the network they just cap customers plans... lol. Guess it makes sense since they'll (at SOME point) lose exclusivity, so having spent a lot in infrastructure would have gone to waste, haha.
Agreed. And no matter what, they will NEVER unlock the old phones. That would be way too reasonable. (I so wish I could be proven wrong...)
It's okay, one day AT&T will be to the US market as Nokia now is... back in 2000 everyone wanted the nokia 8000 series phones, but they decided to be hard headed, and look where it got them (in the US market at least)... AT&T is doing the same, we'll all look back and laugh when someone else gets iPhone. Imagine if a company with the mindset of T-Mobile got it on their 3G frequency... wowsa... I agree T-Mo isn't great coverage, but their price makes the difference in coverage tolerable I'd think... AT&T charges lobster-prices for chicken.
AT&T charges lobster-prices for chicken.
To me, then T-Mobile is like going vegan
I have to remember which corridors not to walk on at my university while on the phone, as I would drop a call. A couple of years of that, and I may start complaining Moral of the story: T-Mobile may be fine in the big cities, but for better peace of mind and data choices (which all comes at a price) there's AT&T.
For everyone referring tot he thread topic:
So it looks like the golden opportunity is over... I just got off the phone with one of the Senior Managers (why did I capitalize that? i don't know lol)...
They said that the iPhone and Unlimited GPRS (data) plans were discontinued in May of 2009. However, as many have said, they were grandfathered in the customer service systems, but only for a year, so as of May 2010 there's no possible way for them to ADD a sim to the plan, meaning if you have it, cherish it and keep your SIM active, but if you don't, no amount of begging, pleading, nor escalating will ever get that "Pick a Plan" back... bummer, I just missed out.
Wish there was a reasonable alternative. I'm still curious if there's a back door way to activate a sim on the iPad data plan... since it's technically month to month, and I have an unused SIM with AT&T... there's got to be a way to activate the SIM without actually having the iPad, and then using the SIM in my iPhone 4 since the APN is the same...
Thoughts\suggestions?
So it looks like the golden opportunity is over... I just got off the phone with one of the Senior Managers (why did I capitalize that? i don't know lol)...
They said that the iPhone and Unlimited GPRS (data) plans were discontinued in May of 2009. However, as many have said, they were grandfathered in the customer service systems, but only for a year, so as of May 2010 there's no possible way for them to ADD a sim to the plan, meaning if you have it, cherish it and keep your SIM active, but if you don't, no amount of begging, pleading, nor escalating will ever get that "Pick a Plan" back... bummer, I just missed out.
Wish there was a reasonable alternative. I'm still curious if there's a back door way to activate a sim on the iPad data plan... since it's technically month to month, and I have an unused SIM with AT&T... there's got to be a way to activate the SIM without actually having the iPad, and then using the SIM in my iPhone 4 since the APN is the same...
Thoughts\suggestions?
Now you have me curiosified... haha... what's the actual name of the grandfathered plan? I'd love to give it a go at trying to get them to add it to my account.
You can't do that anymore and I don't even know how they allowed me to have that unlimited data plan on my GoPhone plan back then.
I had called a year ago in August asking if there was anyway that I could possibly have the old $19.99 media net plan even though it was no longer offered, I was told no. A week later, I got an SMS asking me to take a survey on why I called CS. I did and when asked why I called, I told them I was wanting the unlimited media net to use with my iPhone on my Pick a Plan GoPhone. On September 25, the day they enabled MMS on the iPhone, they sent me a SMS telling me that I could get the unlimited media net for $19.99 by calling 611. I did, the lady added it on and I used it from October 2 through whenever I sold that sim card sometime back in April I think.
AT&T throttles their data for prepaid users. When I was using the unlimited media net on my iPhone, I was only able to get about 300Kbps where my postpaid iPhone account would get 1.5Mbps using the same phone. AT&T does not like people using tons of data on prepaid at all and the throttling issue has been brought up many times on the howardforums.
I was paying $75 a month for my Pick a plan with unlimited media net, just $10 less than I am paying now on my real iPhone plan with unthrottled data. I sold that sim card for $50 and was glad to get rid of it. Because it was a Pick a Plan that was no longer offered, it could never be changed without canceling the plan so I was stuck paying the $75 a month if I wanted to keep the data.
Yeah thats what they told me.... May 2009-May 2010 it was offered, but only as an escalation\retention\grandfathered plan, so any average joe couldn't call and add it, there had to be special protocol and circumstances....
Now the window is closed.... which sucks... but where one window closes another one opens. I'll just get an iPad data sim and use it in my iPhone 4.... tho I guess I won't be able to use voice\texts... but thanks to TextFree and Skype, it's all good as long as I have 3G coverage
So for $25 a month unlimited voice (skype)\data\text (textfree) I guess that's as good as I can do without going on a consumer plan... oye.
Yeah thats what they told me.... May 2009-May 2010 it was offered, but only as an escalation\retention\grandfathered plan, so any average joe couldn't call and add it, there had to be special protocol and circumstances....
Now the window is closed.... which sucks... but where one window closes another one opens. I'll just get an iPad data sim and use it in my iPhone 4.... tho I guess I won't be able to use voice\texts... but thanks to TextFree and Skype, it's all good as long as I have 3G coverage
I edited to add a little bit more to my post at the end.
... and that's just the way AT&T wants it, hehe.
It's only confusing because AT&T doesn't serve up an unlimited data plan on a month to month basis. I am not sure why they don't... say they offer the iPhone MaxiSuperDuperCrazyPlusPlusEnormous (whatever they call the plan, lol) $25.00 per month on the contract, why not add 50% premium and allow people to add it on a prepaid month-to-month plan? They'd make money charging $40 a month, and people who wanted it would have an option and not be forced to work the system and AT&T would appear to actually be doing something customer-friendly. LOL. I don't have an issue with paying more for a prepaid solution, I understand the economics that there's no stickiness to a prepaid customer so AT&T wants to incent customers to go post-paid, but they don't even offer a solution for prepaid. Only in the US is it like this. Strange.
I don't have a GoPhone and only thing I have is an unlocked IPhone.. and I was going to buy only a prepaid sim-card activation kit. but should I buy a prepaid sim-card with a phone to get that IMEI #??
You might as well. I just went to Target and bought a Samsung Prepaid GoPhone kit. It cost $30 and came with a $20 starter credit, so for $10 I got a phone too, can't beat that. Then you can just activate the SIM using the IMEI of the phone it came with.... and pop the sim into your iphone.
Are there really a lot of people using the prepaid data option on go phone? I keep seeing the replies here. I use it but I'm only in the US about 1/3 of my time so it's the only seemingly viable option... but every week I use about 200mb of data, so it's expensive, but then it's really my only choice in a country that's so ass-backwards in cellular plans.