Prepaid SIMs in the USA [telecom]

For many years I've been perfectly content to take whatever phone a wireless company offered and paid obscene monthly rates whether I barely used the phone or used all my minutes. And I liked it that way. But these days I want to decouple my phone from my carrier. Ideally I'd like a prepaid plan that gives high data usage, but low phone usage that is cheaper than what I'm paying today. And since I'm talking SIM cards, yes, GSM.

What are my options in the USA? I've nosed around and I can't find anything. Prepaid plans here seem to be targeted to older people or young people without credit. Is there perhaps a third option? Postpaid without a contract?

John

Two thoughts, neither, alas, terribly attractive:

1) Find a foreign telco roaming on both T-Mo and at&t/ws at attractive prepaid rates (if possible); or 2) Ask over at alt.cellular.attws about GSM counterparts to the well-loved PagePlus prepaid CDMA services.

Cheers, and keep us posted what you find, -- tlvp

That limits you to AT&T and T-Mobile. AT&T's prepaid service is Gophone, which is not cheap for high data use. You can get 1MB for $5, or 100MB for $20, or per use at 1 cent / kb. T-Mobile is no better:

Some looking around on the net says that 100MB for $20 is the best prepaid GSM data rate available in the US.

I have a GSM Tracfone which you wouldn't like. The SIM is tied to the phone (if you put it in a different phone, or you put a different SIM in the phone, neither works), and their data pricing is opaque and high,

I see that Boost Mobile has some reasonable prices, underlying network is Sprint, and if you ask nicely, you can switch your account to any other Sprint CDMA phone.

R's, John

Thanks. Sounds like I was lied to. :-)

I was listening to an episode of "This Week in Google" and one of the hosts mentioned a prepaid plan with unlimited data. I absolutely could not find anything of the sort and perhaps the reason is because it doesn't exist.

John

It's possible one exists for a dongle you plug into your PC.

Or, more likely, he lives somewhere other than the US. Our large volume voice rates are very cheap, but our large volume data rates are not.

Regards, John Levine, snipped-for-privacy@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail.

Mon, 27 Dec 2010 23:39:01 -0600 John Mayson écrit:=0A=0A

=0A=0AThere are now numerous options if you decide to go the prepaid route. T-Mobile for instance has several options from $30 - $

70 per month for either unlimited ($50 - $70) voice minutes or $30 for comb ined voice minutes and text with a small amount of data.=0A=0A's also AT&T=0A=0A =0A=0A ar e the only national GSM operators in the US. There are some smaller region al operators, but for national operators there's basically just AT&T and T- Mobile.=0A=0AAs far as no contract service I believe you can get it from T- Mobile, but they'll still do a credit check on you and if you don't have an y US credit you may be relegated to some sort of prepaid scheme.=0A=0A=0A

I've heard of people getting a Sprint Blackberry, getting a cheap Boost prepaid phone, and putting the SIM card from the Boost into the Blackberry. Allegedly then you end up with a phone that gets voice at the Boost rates, and free data. Haven't tried it myself, and it's hard to imagine that Sprint wouldn't plug the loophole if it does indeed exist.

Dave

A SIM card with Sprint?

What you said is more or less what I've heard. But when I go to look I find absolutely nothing and the braintrust here seems to back that up. I suppose the old adage is true: if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

John

As we all know, there's no SIM card with Sprint phones. (Well, unless you mean Nextel, but that's not it here.)

Some blog entries I've found say that if you call Boost and ask nicely, they will agree to move your account to a different compatible phone, presumably identified by the phone's MEID.

R's, John

Here's the response to my attempt to follow my own advice:

HTH. Cheers, -- tlvp

-- Avant de repondre, jeter la poubelle, SVP