

Kickin It Old School With A Prepaid Phone  - derekc
http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/21/not-just-for-drug-dealers-and-15-year-olds-kickin-it-old-school-with-a-prepaid-phone/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+Techcrunch+(TechCrunch)

======
jasonkester
Here in Europe, unlocked pre-paid phones are the standard. When you go on
vacation, the first thing you do is drop into a mobile phone shop and pick up
a new SIM for whatever country you happen to be in this week.

When I moved back to England from Spain, I walked into a store, paid 5 pounds,
and received a SIM with 5 pounds credit on it. The whole operation took
upwards of a minute and a half.

It's just so simple, straightforward, and cheap this way. It's amazing that
people in the US tolerate it any other way. Especially since you can walk into
any T-Mobile or ATT store today and get a prepaid SIM for any unlocked
handset.

~~~
billpaetzke
How can you get a data plan with that? Is that included with the pre-paid SIM?

(I don't know because I have a very simple phone--but good to know for when I
get a smartphone)

~~~
barrkel
Different carriers have different policies. I use an O2 UK prepay SIM, and
they have a kind of "subscription" you can sign up to, the web "bolt-on": they
charge 7.50 GBP against your credit once a month, and you have then have
"unlimited" web access for that month. You can cancel at any moment, so
there's no obligation; and if you don't have 7.50 credit come billing time,
you simply don't get the unlimited web access. In other words, the downside
risks are negligible.

Another difference is that SIM credit is generally measured in actual
currency, rather than minutes. Different calls then cost different amounts of
currency; but if you buy credit in bulk (20 or 40 GBP instead of 10), you
usually get a 10 or 20% increase in nominal credit value.

Also, calls received are free if you're not roaming to a different country.
Mobile phone numbers have different prefixes to local numbers; they
essentially have their own area code. This also means that calling mobile
phones is more expensive than calling a landline, especially from a different
operator. (There are usually special deals for intra-operator connections.)

I use a Vodafone Ireland SIM when I'm roaming. It has a different approach to
the data plan; up to 50MB data per day costs 0.99 EUR. If you don't use any
data on a day, it doesn't cost anything. If you try to push it to the limits,
in theory it means that you could get 1.5GB/month for 30EUR/month. The
Vodafone SIM data charge seems to be the same in all countries I've been in;
Vodafone is in almost every European country, but it also works in France (SFR
is 44% owned by Vodafone) and the US (on AT&T).

------
benofsky
It's weird to see how less prevalent prepaid phones are in the US. Here in
Europe, they're everywhere, hell I bought my iPhone on _prepay_. I wonder what
lead to this difference.

~~~
halo
I have wondered this before too. I can think of a few reasons why this might
be the case:

* US phone operators charging for incoming calls and messages, which make prepay phones much less useful.

* Standardisation on GSM in most of the rest of the world, which reduced control by the networks, created a market for unlocked phones, and increased competition by making it easier to change networks and phones.

* Cultural differences that mean that more people end up on contract phones. For example, teenagers often end up on 'Family Plan' contracts rather than Pay-As-You-Go, at least partially influenced by the above two factors. This helps creates a cycle where people consider contracts 'the norm'.

~~~
benofsky
Yeah, I never understood the charging for incoming calls but more so the
charging for incoming messages, you have _no_ control over that. Insane!

~~~
maw
Charging for incoming calls seemed annoying at first, but it does have the
advantage of making you more callable. No problems with cheapskate businesses
who insist on having your number but won't accept the one you want to give.

I agree with respect to SMSes, though.

------
billpaetzke
I have been using a pre-paid phone for the past 10 months. It averages out to
~$20/month for me--very low for the USA! I am on the computer about 12
hours/day for work, research, and of course Hacker News; so I don't need apps.
And I don't really need a phone that often. I just use it to schedule appts,
catch up with family, friends, etc.

Pre-paid phones: two-thumbs up ^^

------
NickM
This article is right on. I've been tempted by many smartphones over the
years, but I currently pay about $10/month average for my prepaid cellphone,
and it works great. Smartphones are cool and all, but I really don't feel like
I'm missing enough to outweigh the thousands of dollars I've saved over the
last few years.

~~~
barrkel
FWIW, I pay 7.50 GBP per month prepay for the SIM in my Nexus One; that's for
O2's web "bolt-on". Since I work from home, most of the time I'm actively
using the thing it's on wifi, and while the background downloading it does
(email, twitter, etc.) is over the mobile network, it's in no danger of
hitting any limits. And it still all works out fine when I'm out and about.

Roaming charges here in Europe are a bit of a joke, however. I have an Irish
Vodafone SIM for that purpose, which is 0.99 EUR for up to 50MB, per day. The
best thing about that SIM is I've found it's still 0.99 EUR no matter whether
I'm in the UK, the US, or anywhere in Europe (I even picked up Vodafone
Albania while on a ferry between Greece and Italy).

So in practice, I find pre-pay SIMs combined with an unlocked smartphone works
out pretty well.

------
thesethings
I too use pre-paid only. I pay less than $7/month w/Virgin mobile. I do look
longingly at smartphones. But it's just not worth it for me with current
structure of plans. They're either voice-centric, which i'd never use, or
data-centric in ways i don't need. i'm near a computer w/internet access most
of the time. I love the Internet, and do all the dorky social networking
things that make me somebody who should be slurping access from everywhere.
I'll gladly drop bank for something that fits me, but i'm basically waiting
out the entire old school phone system :D In the meantime, i have a bad phone.
I bet there will be Android phones soon on the big pre-paid systems.

~~~
chipsy
I too was paying peanuts for V-Mo, then I got a girlfriend and had to move to
their unlimited-text plan because I started sending over 100 texts a day for
the first week or so. Still only $20 a month. If I added $5 more I could get
the unlimited data plan too, but their phones aren't interesting enough for
that, or weren't as of a few months ago. I see that they're offering a
Blackberry now, though. Maybe I'll think about an upgrade when the Android
phones start appearing.

------
mikecane
New York Times: Prepaid Is the New Wireless Battleground
[http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/22/prepaid-is-the-
new-...](http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/22/prepaid-is-the-new-
battleground-for-wireless-carriers/)

MetroPCS in my area is always filled with people, almost like an Apple Store!
Unfortunately, they don't yet have anything that approaches a true smartphone.
Palm could dump their stock of Pre and Pixi there and really clean up. For the
few phones that offer data, the voice/data bundle is just $60 prepaid/month.
Hell, I'd go for that, Let me pay for my own damn phone and not be tied to a
carrier for two years!

------
foomarks
I will gladly pay for a phone outright if the carriers offer a data-centric
plan for $50 a month with no commitment.

Until then, I'm hiding out this year with Google Voice and my Virgin Mobile
prepaid. So far, it's been awesome and works out exactly for my needs. It
sucks that I don't have decent mobile data: but I can wait a little longer
until carriers realize they need to offer better and customized services.

I've saved about $400 this year so far by switching to my new setup. With the
saved money, I have some new shiny clothes and have been enjoying eating out
more!

------
Groxx
Have been hunting around for prepaid plans, as Verizon is currently screwing
me for all I'm worth (2 people ≈ $90/mo for 700 minutes, texts 20c each way).
Problem is, I _need_ roaming, so Virgin is out, and we hit roughly 300 minutes
per month.

About the best one I've been able to find thus far has been Net10... anyone
use it? Anyone care to chime in? The website is a bit frightening, but I'd be
willing to survive that.

~~~
lotharbot
Verizon was screwing me even worse. $35/mo for a single phone with 100
minutes; my regular usage was about 50 minutes per month. The month my son was
born, the bill came to something like $150 for about 300 minutes used. Net
result: over the last year, I paid about $500 for less than a thousand
minutes.

I recently switched to Tracfone (affiliated with Net10, and targeted at even
lower usage). So far I've been quite pleased with call quality, though I
haven't left the neighborhood yet.

------
mleonhard
T-Mobile prepaid works well in the US. Just get a used T-Mobile Samsung flip
phone and then get a prepaid SIM card. You can order the SIM card from
T-mobile.com or walk into your local store. Initially, you should put $100 on
your phone to enter the 'Gold' plan. Then your minutes and phone number will
last for 1 year from the last time you added minutes. Talk time is about
$0.10/minute.

~~~
joezydeco
I bought a T-Mobile prepaid phone at Target for $20, and put the SIM into an
iPhone 2G that I got for cheap.

Works great for calls and SMS. You even get some limited websites through
TMO's portal, like CNN, ESPN, and Traffic.com.

------
cubicle67
I have an old iPhone I was given, and I'm using that on prepaid. Costs me
about AU$30 month and for that I get 300MB data + a few hundred text/mms + few
hundred minutes + free tethering (we've had iPhone tethering for about a year
now)

------
pmccool
It's striking how mature mobile phone technology is. You can buy a phone that
works really well as a phone for quite reasonable sums of money. I have bought
prepaid mobile packages just for the phone.

------
mambodog
I use a prepaid phone for an inbound-only number for my business. Just gotta
remember to add some credit if I'm still using it in a year's time, so the
number doesn't get repossessed.

------
foomarks
Dug this Boy Genius Report article up from May 6th:

"The amount of voice minutes used by young adults continues to plummet as
email, IM and SMS grows at a rate of 150% during the years 2007 to 2009.
Factor in 1800% growth in mobile data in this segment and it’s pretty obvious
Virgin is one of the few companies that actually caters to the demands of its
customers."

<http://bit.ly/9kWCcm>

~~~
thesethings
Thanks so much for posting this.

I wish the TC post was less, "this random circumstance happened to me," and
more about what you mention above: prepaid is a good fit for MANY people. (And
not to mention the growing data > voice divide that is driving some of us to
prepaid.)

------
randallsquared
My experience with prepaid phones is that they're cheaply made (as you'd
expect for a phone you can buy for $10). I used prepaid between 2001 and 2008
(and am still on a month-to-month plan), but most of the phones were crap.
Volume doesn't go up far enough, or the screen has dead pixels, or the keypad
stops working unless you push really hard on the numbers, or it can only hold
20 contact numbers, or the battery lasts only half the day after a few months
of use (when it started, I could charge it only once a week, but...).

On the plus side, if I had these problems with my current smartphone, I'd get
it fixed, whereas with those, I just threw them away and got a new phone.

~~~
ugh
What’s prepaid got to do with the phone you use? I bought a nice unlocked
Nokia 6300 (now in its third year of production but quite small, built like a
tank and even good looking – works great for phone calls and the occasional
text message) for 100 Euro and just use my free prepaid SIM with it.

That’s perfect for me. I hardly ever make calls but it’s still nice to have a
phone number where others can reach you and since my university has great free
WiFi, spending all that money on some 3G plan would be a real waste. I can
nearly always just use my iPod touch.

~~~
randallsquared
_What’s prepaid got to do with the phone you use?_

In theory, nothing, but for those concerned about comitting to spending more
than $5-10 a month on phone service (that is, the prepaid target market),
spending $100-150 for a phone seems unlikely. And, in fact, I bought $10-15
phones repeatedly, about one a year on average, for the ~7 years I used
prepaid-only. That was mostly with Virgin Mobile, though, which has no SIM,
being a CDMA network.

~~~
alextgordon
It's not quite that simple. You've got to consider the price of the phone on
and off the contract, the price of the contract, monthly usage, prepaid value,
expected life of the phone, etc.

I bought my £100 phone 2 years ago with £10 credit. Still got about £4
remaining on it (clearly I don't make a lot of calls). If I'd bought it on a
contract I would be down double or triple what I paid.

