Is there ANY hope of stand-alone watch data plans this year?

[Steve28]

....any hope at all?

Employer provided iPhone and plan and we're not allowed to add the watch.

EDIT: I do already pair it to the phone with bluetooth, but I want to be able to run without my phone and still stream music and podcasts

 

[Apple_Robert]

A stand-alone watch plan? I don’t see that happening any time soon.

 

[QCassidy352]

I know you said you want to stream, but is there any reason you can't copy music and podcasts on to the watch's internal storage? Maybe not quite what you wanted, but it definitely works!

 

[Itinj24]

My employer gave us iPhones too and it has some custom employer related software on it. I wouldn’t add my AppleID to that thing in a million years lol. Who knows what the hell they can recall from it. I don’t even connect it to my home WiFi. I have my LTE AW paired to my personal iPhone.

To answer your question, most likely not. Apple wouldn’t want to lose iPhone sales.

 

[antbob]

I wanna see that too and technically there is nothing currently preventing that from happening. The only thing you really need iPhone for is eSIM activation on the Watch but that can be implemented. I think the real reason Apple doesnt want to make it happen is battery life eg yesterday my Series 3 reported about 45% left end of day (couple of quick calls and messages and some stopwatch app usage during the day) with my iPhone always on me. Had I left my iPhone I would be lucky if I had 15% left eod. Series 5 is even worse (in my personal experience, ymmv). So iPhone kinda acts as battery pack for the Watch currently.