*Purchasing a prepaid at&t line to use as "dummy line" & upgrade for iPhone 5?*

[hunger4more80]

Thinking of going to walmart & purchasing a pre-paid at&t phone & using that line to upgrade to the iphone 5 &n then once i receive it in the mail, just transfer the phone to my number on the account. Is this possible? Pretty sure i'd have to visit an at&t store to do the nano-sim swap but my question is would i be eligible for the fully discounted pricing if i upgrade the prepaid line? i'd hate to go out and purchase a pre-paid for nothing.

 

[0007776]

You only get the subsidy with the contract which a prepaid phone doesn't have, so you'd just be buying a prepaid phone for nothing.

 

[boshii]

You would have to sign a 2 year contract to get the iPhone 5.

 

[hunger4more80]

So I guess my only option is to open up a new line on my account & transfer that iPhone 5 to my number & just pay the $10 fee each month for the "dummy line?"

 

[0007776]

So I guess my only option is to open up a new line on my account & transfer that iPhone 5 to my number & just pay the $10 fee each month for the "dummy line?"

Yeah that would be your only option if you don't have an upgrade available on your current line and you don't want to pay full price. Although you might need a dumbphone to put on the new line so you can take off the data plan.

 

[tbobmccoy]

You don't actually need another phone to do this. We've done this on my data plan with my wife.

The problem for us is that the number is locked to the contract, and now that my wife's phone has an upgrade available, we're kinda stuck with it now. Switching to the shared data plan would actually be cheaper for us, EXCEPT that doing it with the dummy line on there would cost us 30 bucks, rather than 10 bucks... so it's definitely not worth it to do the shared plan.