Prepaid is an interesting beast. In most of the rest of the world, telcos regard prepaid as a plague and only really offer it as a goteway to "postpay". Postpaid customers are predictable future revenue.
In Australia, I was with Telstra, which has by far the best coverage. I was on cotnract. The reason? For $50 a month I basically got (for me) unlimited voice, text and Internet (2-3GB/month). but the 32GB iPhone 4 only cost me $300 with $100 rebate. The handset outright cost $950 IIRC so for $1400 I got the handset and 2 years of service. I don't think I could've gotten two years of service for $450.
In the US I originally went with AT&T as they were the only GSM network that supported the iPhone (T-Mobile could support it on Edge; Verizon and other models came later). Coverage kinda sucks in NYC, really sucks in the Bay Area but in most of the rest of the country is fine.
This was originally month-to-month but ultimately I figured I may as well get the 4S on contract (the discounted price plus the ETF worked out to be no more than the outright price anyway if I cancelled early).
But prepaid? That tends to relegate you to "inferior" networks in the US. T-Mobile and Sprint can give good deals but have really patchy coverage. MetroPCS, as far as I can tell, exists solely for drug dealers and pimps.
One difference is that in most of the rest of the world you don't pay to receive calls. This makes having a phone and not using it much (to make calls) much more viable. Also texting rates in the US are essentially extortionate.
Other countries (Australia and IIRC the UK at least) seem to more heavily discount handsets. It seems like people most often buy the phone that is $0 upfront on whatever plan they want (or they bump their plan up to where it is $0 upfront). The iPhone changed this dynamic somewhat whereas most people seemed to view phones as interchangeable previously.
This article is right about one thing: people do seem to put too much importance on the upfront cost. I see things like the latest gen iPhone is $99 upfront and the previous generation is $49. For $50 you get older hardware that will be obsolete a year earlier... for something that'll probably cost you up to $2000 (or more) over 2 years anyway.
Here in Vietnam I can get 500MB for $2/month and 3GB for $10/month. No contract, no questions asked. If I don't like my carrier I walk across the street to their competitor, buy a new SIM card, and I'm good to go.
This ostensibly communist country is way more free market than the U.S. in many ways.
The same is true in Morocco: There are no controls are verifications to buy a 3G SIM card. Just walk into a corner store and buy an unlimited 3G SIM card for about $25. It's about 2Mbps up and down. Sometimes the shop owner will insist that you need a USB modem, but only because they don't really understand how just-data can work in a phone.
Who is that with? I was in Vietnam earlier this year, and had real trouble getting the road sellers to understand that I wanted some data. Can you give me a clue what to get next time.
I am £15 prepaid with 3 here in the UK, i get 2,000 texts, 600 minutes and UNLIMITED data. I think this is the best deal I have ever heard of.
I'm currently using Viettel. At least in their main shop here in Nha Trang the staff spoke good enough English that they were able to understand what I wanted. Just tell them you want the 3g plan with the monthly fee.
You may have to go into an actual shop to get this set up. The people selling sims on the side of the road aren't very tech savvy in my experience.
When I was in Vietnam I just bought whatever SIM off someone on the road and then went back to my hotel room and googled up the activation instructions. Usually you just text the name of the plan you want to a special shortcode (same as most UK prepaid)
Same here in Uruguay, for prepaid phone use, you just buy a SIM (2 dollars), then you have to either buy a prepaid card or go to a store where you can "fill" your SIM.
Then you can text the name the plan you want, I pay 5 dollars for one month's worth of data (384 megabytes). You can also get one gigabyte for U$S 5, but expires after 5 days.
If it's like the Philippines, all the SIM does is get you on the network, but with only a SIM card you can't call, text, or anything. Then you purchase a prepaid card from a convenience store or anywhere with call minutes, text messages, and/or data -- the card has a long code that you plug in to the phone to activate it and associate the minutes etc with your SIM.
Do you use all those 600 mins? For £10, giffgaff gives you unlimited data, unlimited text, but only 200 mins. But I don't even bother with their goodybags. Think I spend about between £5-7 a month on just prepay.
Vietnam I found pretty awesome. I got a sim for my phone, tons of data (which I couldn't use up) and plenty of calls for about £5 (150k VND) which lasted the whole month I was there. And the data speeds seemed pretty good (although I was only on 2G). Think I was with Tomato plan on Viettel?
That sounds very similar to my plan on Tesco mobile although my data is limited to 1.5GBs. What is your experience of 3? I've heard bad things about them and worry about the quality of their coverage. Would you recommend them? And if you don't mind me asking: where in the UK are you located?
I use an iPhone with a prepaid SIM with AT&T. I pay 10¢ a minute for calls and texts in addition to a $25/1gb data plan. I make my calls over VOIP with Talkatone and use the Google Voice app for texting. I pay $25 a month.
It was really hard to get this set up. I had to literally fight with AT&T, cut my own SIM, manually enter APN settings. When I have to purchase a new AT&T SIM after traveling they tell me it's not possible, that I can't do it. I explain that it is and I can, tell them how to set it up on their end. Ridiculous.
They tell me the iPhone can't do prepaid (it can), that it isn't unlocked (it is), that it won't work if it's jailbroken (it's not) and that all of my data will magically disappear (it will if you don't configure up the APN settings). They will say anything to steer you from prepaid.
Overseas in Southeast Asia you just walk in to a corner store, pay $2 for a SIM, give him a few dollars to load it up and send a text to buy a data plan. Vietnam was the cheapest, a couple bucks for gigs and gigs of mobile broadband.
I will never buy a phone on contract. AT&T is a nightmare and the fact that we're no longer married helps me rest easy.
Unfortunately, as already pointed out, we are being screwed in the USA and have been for about a decade now. This extends, not only to mobile data, texting/SMS, and calling; but also to land data.
It's not just AT&T that is the problem there is an unspoken wink and a nod between the carriers to maintain an, essentially, monopolistic cartel on the market. More so on land, but also in the air.
As much of our economy, choice in mobile and land data is nothing but a facade.
Buy a prepaid SIM and tell them you want $25/1gb of data. They might force you to buy a $25 rate plan that goces you some minutes and texts. Dont turn on celluar data. Connect to wifi and go to APNChanger.com
Use the wiki to look up your GSM carrier's APN settings.
Using APNChanger's manual entry option, enter the correct settings and install the APN. You may now turn on cellular data. If it says you're not subscribed to a plan when you try to load a website, turn off data, uninstall the APN and repeat, paying careful attention to the APN settings - you typed them in wrong.
At the end of the month, set your data plan to auto renew and make sure you have enough money in your prepaid account so that it does. You'll be charged a few cents for texts and calls if you make them.
You also may have to cut the SIM down to fit in your iPhone.
"This article is right about one thing: people do seem to put too much importance on the upfront cost. I see things like the latest gen iPhone is $99 upfront and the previous generation is $49. For $50 you get older hardware that will be obsolete a year earlier... for something that'll probably cost you up to $2000 (or more) over 2 years anyway"
I think it's more of a cash flow thing than anything else. People buy the best thing they can afford based on the cash they have available at that very moment.
I don't doubt that you're right about that, but if 50 additional dollars in upfront costs is the deciding factor for someone then getting a high-end smartphone with a ~$80+ per month plan is probably a bad financial move for them in the first place.
> In Australia, I was with Telstra, which has by far the best coverage. I was on cotnract. The reason? For $50 a month I basically got (for me) unlimited voice, text and Internet (2-3GB/month). but the 32GB iPhone 4 only cost me $300 with $100 rebate. The handset outright cost $950 IIRC so for $1400 I got the handset and 2 years of service. I don't think I could've gotten two years of service for $450.
This is similar to my situation. I pay $79/month and pay $4 per month (or thereabouts) for a 32GB iPhone 4S. $0 upfront. I'm a relatively heavy user, and therefore the $1992 over 24 months that I pay seems the better deal (for me) than buying it outright for $999 and then only having $40/month to spend on pre-paid credit, which would not be enough for my usage.
I also get (slightly) cheaper call and text rates, AFAIK.
This article is right about one thing: people do seem to put too much importance on the upfront cost. I see things like the latest gen iPhone is $99 upfront and the previous generation is $49. For $50 you get older hardware that will be obsolete a year earlier... for something that'll probably cost you up to $2000 (or more) over 2 years anyway.
I think your conclusion is valid but that particular anecdote is pointless. If a customer is willing to pay $50 less up front for a cell phone, then chances are any hardware obsolescence isn't going to be particularly noticable.
I think the issue is people think they pay $50 for an older version instead of $300 for the latest, thus saving massive 80% or so. In reality, it's $1,970 vs. $2,220 (assuming $80/mo for two years). The difference is only 11%. If people realized that, many could reconsider accepting significantly outdated hardware for 11% savings over 2-year period.
I understand your point, but I think 'significant outdated hardware' is a misnomer; with the exception of things like Retina Display breaking backwards compatability, its pretty rare that the difference between two phone generations is that important for non-power users.
I'm in Australia too and use Soul/TPG(runs on the Optus network). I pay $15 a month for 1gb data and $40 worth of calls. While I'm not a super heavy user, I never go over my cap. This is what has always kept me from buying a contract subsidised phone...my no-phone contract is just too damn good.
Would love an iPhone, but the only 2 options I have are a 24month contract at around $50/month or lay down around $900AUD for the phone.
Instead I picked up an ex AT&T WP7 phone for $US160 :)
I'm not sure about urban areas, but the further out you go, the worse Telstra (3G coverage) gets. I live about 100k's outside of Adelaide and Optus is superior by far to Telstra and Vodafone (3). All their prices and plans for mobile data are atrocious, so we go with Internode, who lease from Optus and whose prices, while still atrocious, are overall better. And everything about Internode, especially their customer service, is better. My two cents.
I get unlimited SMS and 200 minutes voice for $25 a month through AT&T. The cheapest plan Straight Talk shows on their web site is $30 a month. Am I missing something?
"T-Mobile and Sprint can give good deals but have really patchy coverage"
I am using Boost (Sprint network) and it doesn't seem to roam. Using only Sprint towers, I get one or two bars in most places and drop off of 3G along one segment of my commute. Well worth it though for how little I use it outside of areas with Wifi.
I looked at buying a phone upfront, but it was better to get it from Optus, and go on a 12 month plan. I ended up paying $1200, when the phone was $1000, and I got 12 months of calls and data.
In Australia, I was with Telstra, which has by far the best coverage. I was on cotnract. The reason? For $50 a month I basically got (for me) unlimited voice, text and Internet (2-3GB/month). but the 32GB iPhone 4 only cost me $300 with $100 rebate. The handset outright cost $950 IIRC so for $1400 I got the handset and 2 years of service. I don't think I could've gotten two years of service for $450.
In the US I originally went with AT&T as they were the only GSM network that supported the iPhone (T-Mobile could support it on Edge; Verizon and other models came later). Coverage kinda sucks in NYC, really sucks in the Bay Area but in most of the rest of the country is fine.
This was originally month-to-month but ultimately I figured I may as well get the 4S on contract (the discounted price plus the ETF worked out to be no more than the outright price anyway if I cancelled early).
But prepaid? That tends to relegate you to "inferior" networks in the US. T-Mobile and Sprint can give good deals but have really patchy coverage. MetroPCS, as far as I can tell, exists solely for drug dealers and pimps.
One difference is that in most of the rest of the world you don't pay to receive calls. This makes having a phone and not using it much (to make calls) much more viable. Also texting rates in the US are essentially extortionate.
Other countries (Australia and IIRC the UK at least) seem to more heavily discount handsets. It seems like people most often buy the phone that is $0 upfront on whatever plan they want (or they bump their plan up to where it is $0 upfront). The iPhone changed this dynamic somewhat whereas most people seemed to view phones as interchangeable previously.
This article is right about one thing: people do seem to put too much importance on the upfront cost. I see things like the latest gen iPhone is $99 upfront and the previous generation is $49. For $50 you get older hardware that will be obsolete a year earlier... for something that'll probably cost you up to $2000 (or more) over 2 years anyway.