Filed under: iPhone
Prepaid Data Packages and the iPhone
I recently had the chance to sit down with my iPhone and a prepaid SIM with a $50 account balance. I really got a chance to see how the iPhone would function with a pay-as-you-go plan and its data plan. What I learned was this: although using iPhone with pay-as-you-go means you can make occasional phone calls when you need to, you'll want to avoid EDGE data and stick to WiFi whenever possible. Here's the complete run-down.
Activating the iPhone
Getting the iPhone to activate with the new SIM took longer than I expected because I was using an updated version of iASign and I forgot one basic rule: You need to deactivate your phone first before trying to reactivate it with another card. This cost me almost a half hour of frustration until I finally remembered.
A paperclip let me remove the old SIM and swap in a new one from a cheap disposable Motorola phone. Then I used iASign to deactivate the iPhone(./iASign.mac --deactivate), to check the state of the iPhone (./iASign.mac --state, which should return deactivated), and then to activate (./iASign.mac --automatic iPhoneActivation_private.pem). You may wish to use its backup feature before doing the deactivate/reactivate.
MediaNet
Once reactivated, I called 611 to connect to GoPhone customer support. To talk to a person, you need to say "Customer Service Agent" a few times. The automated daemon will eventually catch on and connect you to a person.
The agent told me about the available feature packages: namely the 1 MB ($4.99) and 5 MB ($9.99) MediaNet data plans. Data plans last for 30 days and will roll over from month to month if you renew them before the end of the 30 days--up to a limit of 15 MB. AT&T also offers a messaging plan which will save you some money when pay-as-you-go SMS message rates go up from $0.05/message to $0.15/message next month.
She connected me back to the daemon and I went ahead and purchased my plan. If you want to try this yourself, here's what you have to do.
Say "Buy Features". After recognizing this phrase, the daemon prompted me with "GoPhone Mall" and asked "What Store?"
Say "Media Net". She confirmed what I said.
Say "5 MB". Another confirmation.
Say "Buy It". It then took about a minute to process the request.
After finishing my purchase, I hung up and checked the Kilobyte balance on my iPhone: HomeScreen > Phone > Keypad, enter *777*3#. This showed I had 5120 KB remaining. An AT&T Megabyte equals 1024 of their Kilobytes. No surprises there.
Spending my Megabytes
Once loaded with ten dollars/5 MB, I set about to spend those megabytes. I checked my remaining KB before and after each test. You'll be surprised by one of the costs--but more about that after this list.
Loaded Google Home Page. $0.01 Google's home page loaded without any problem and used a minimal amount of data transfer. Compare the two cent price to my original tests a couple of months ago without a data package. Then the page cost $0.11 using the pay-as-you-go standard $0.01/kb rates. Not bad.
Watched one YouTube Video. $4.76 I opened the YouTube application, searched for a video, selected it and watched it. The playback paused twice due to data transfer glitches at minute 2:39 and 3:45 of a 4-minute video. It took several seconds before the playback resumed. Edge is not the best choice for YouTube, even if you're on unlimited data.
Google Maps. $1.42 I searched for Ethiopian restaurants in my neighborhood, selected two and looked at their information pages. I viewed only normal map data (no satellite imagery) although I did zoom in and out for clearer views.
Stock Data. $0.20 I entered a new stock ticker symbol and checked the 1 year historic data for it. Google SMS would have been cheaper.
Weather. $0.10 I have 13 cities listed in my weather application. I checked them all.
Photo email. $0.10 I selected a photo from an iPhone album, addressed it and emailed it using the standard iPhone photo send feature. As usual, the photo was reduced in sized before getting sent.
Full resolution photo-by-mail. $0.80 I used my SendPics utility to send a full-resolution 2-Megapixel JPG photo. Although JPEG compresses the photo quite a bit, this file used more data than the standard email size and the cost reflects that.
Browsing Flickr. $24.07 I pointed Safari to Flickr and navigated as such: Flickr > Explore > Feburary 2007 > February 2nd > Picture of Dog.
Why Flickr cost 24 dollars and change
So why did my (rather limited if you think about it) Flickr session cost so much? What happened was this: After the first $2.60 of data, I ran out of money on my $10 feature plan. My per megabyte rate jumped back from $2/MB to $10/MB. 2+ MB later, I had spent over twenty dollars to view a picture of a dog.
Wow.
There was no warning, no cutoff. I didn't receive a you-have-exhausted-your-data message until several minutes later. And my remaining balance was already reduced by $21.37.
Lessons
So, what does this whole exercise show? It reinforces what you already know: the iPhone doesn't play well with limited data plans. It also suggests that you'll want to always make sure your iPhone is on WiFi before you surf if you're using your iPhone with pay-as-you-go. Use a utility like my UIctl to disable the iPhone's communications center and ensure that any data transfer happens through WiFi.
Consider using Google's SMS search options as an alternative to surfing and Google Maps. Despite the upcoming rate hikes, an SMS search may save you money over surfing with Safari. You can also buy SMS feature plans ($5/200, $10/1000, $20/unlimited) that last for 30 days at a time and offer rollover options.
Add extra data packages. You can add up to 3 packages at a time to your pay-as-you-go plan. If you think you may need 5 MB, consider adding 10 MB--just in case. Although the data rolls over from month to month, you top out at 15 MB. So you may end up spending $5/month just to keep your 15 MB alive for occasional use but that's better than a $24 visit to Flickr.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
nick said 4:38PM on 9-24-2007
you could also get the $20.00 unlimited data plan....
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nick said 4:42PM on 9-24-2007
ah weird got cutoff...
i was saying
you could also get the $20.00 unlimited data plan and then never need to worry about anything, other then actually getting EDGE. lol
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Erica Sadun said 4:42PM on 9-24-2007
Nick: Pay as you go does not offer the $20 MediaMax unlimited plan.
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DanS said 4:50PM on 9-24-2007
Erica, I activated my phone with Indephendence and then unlocked it with your own unlock.app. But I was able to switch three sim cards without deactivation. Although, the first from a Net10 phone wasn't recognised. Second was Tmobile card that worked fine. Third was sim card from an Indian phone that is also working with no problems on the tmobile network.
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Joseph said 5:03PM on 9-24-2007
Is "pay as you go" different from the "pick your plan" prepaid option? I got my iPhone a week ago Saturday and activated it on a prepaid plan using the 999-99-9999 SSN trick, and each of those three plans came with $19.99 unlimited net.
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Erica Sadun said 5:07PM on 9-24-2007
Joseph: http://www.wireless.att.com/cell-phone-service/go-phones/
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Chrysaor said 5:48PM on 9-24-2007
I use pay as you go with my iPhone. I called ATT and completely removed Media Net. It is very expensive and I have wifi access in my city, so don't really need it.
As others pointed out, pay as you go doesn't offer unlimited data choice.
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yacoub said 6:02PM on 9-24-2007
Erica: Any way to get files onto an iPod touch by attaching the files to a GMail draft? Just a thought. If there's a way to get an installer or some other executable file onto it, many things are possible from there, right? =)
I'm guessing the Safari browser doesn't allow attachment downloads though...
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Manny said 8:24PM on 9-24-2007
@Brandon
Erica isn't talking about the "Pick Your Plan" option, which you have. She's talking about ATT's other plan, the "Pay As You Go" option. Totally different thing!
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Darryl Yee said 9:15PM on 9-24-2007
It cost me $15.21 to visit the apple home page. I learned the hard way too.
Using DeEdge now to keep Edge off. Works great.
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Zaw Thet said 2:51AM on 9-25-2007
Getting free text info/alerts from 4INFO (http://www.4info.net) would have been even cheaper and easier. It has all the search functionality of Google SMS and you can also sign up for free alerts for sports scores, weather, etc.
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sean percival said 5:00AM on 9-25-2007
I'm on the pay as you go plan for two reasons:
1. i hate cell phones, i use it for about 10 mins of talk time each month. my voicemail msg literally says dont leave me a msg, email me instead.
2. i hate att, so i didnt want to get into a contract
So I had the phone for about a month before even using the edge data thanks limited use and available wifi. On a recent trip i was at the airport and to kill time pulled up netvibes to read a few blogs. I clicked to 2 blogs, techcrunch and another, Ii only loaded 2 pages in total. After I was done I got a notice about usage "Your last transaction cost $37.00". Yes 37 dollars to view 2 blogs.
So for those of us who dont want a $60 plan we will never use 1/10th of I guess we are screwed. BTW anyone want to buy a slightly used iphone? ;)
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William Donelson said 5:31AM on 9-25-2007
This is TYPICAL of US companies these days, especially phone companies.
They want to TRICK YOU into spending your money. Sure, they dress it up in multi-page contracts, to hide their scheme, to make it legal.
This is due to many years of Republican corporate-do-anything Congress, and the corrupt Cheney-Bush administration's belief that Americans are suckers and can be manipulated and fleeced of their money and their children (soldiers) any way they want.
But they're wrong, aren't they? Aren't they?
Nope. Americans are a bunch of suckers.
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AngryMuffin said 6:37AM on 9-25-2007
Ah haha. Hahahaha! William's comment made my night. Because bad phone bills are Bush's fault. It's too rich. As if Clinton-Gore never put anything like the DMCA into law for the benefit of big business. Or capped welfare programs for the poor nationwide. Or passed on the Kyoto Protocol long before Bush because it was bad for business. Whooboy. Yep, the world's going to Hell in a basket on the back of an elephant. And Americans are stupid. Gotta get that meme in there, too. And we all speak with loud Texan accents when we don't understand you. You forgot that one, William.
As for the iPhone plans, the Pay-as-you-go plan does NOT sound like the path for the faint of heart. You have to have your iPhone seriously tricked out to avoid being spanked. I'm with some of the other posters. Sounds like you are better off disabling EDGE completely and just using WAPs to jack into the net. Or just bend over and pay AT&T...
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Brandon said 7:40AM on 9-25-2007
ERICA! Sorry, but you are giving people the wrong image about Prepaid iPhones! If you activate it through iTunes, using all 9's as your SSN, you have UNLIMITED data, NO annoying messages after browsing the web. NO messages using SMS (if you sign up for a texting plan)
Please let people know that if you sign up through iTunes, having a prepaid iPhone is PAINLESS!
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d70 said 10:12AM on 9-25-2007
In addition to DeEdge, are there any other apps/methods for disabling Edge (command line etc.)? Thanks.
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bwg1974 said 10:32AM on 9-25-2007
It seems people are confused about the plan Erica is using in this article. AT&T offers two kinds of prepaid plans---Pay As You Go and Pick Your Plan. Some readers have already said that you can activate the iPhone using a PYP plan which can include unlimited MediaNet. Inferring from the article and reading the tags, it seems Erica tested the phone against the PAYG plan which does not include unlimited MediaNet. Anyway, if you want to read how these rate plans compare, I invite you to read my post on the subject.
http://www.lindenlan.net/2007/08/15/prepaid-vs-contract-att-gophone-or-nation-plan/
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ml12 said 10:55AM on 9-25-2007
Just wondering, why exactly does everyone hate AT&T so much?
I understand hating cellphone companies in general, and contracts, but why specifically AT&T?
I have had previous experience with Sprint & T-mobile and my experience is as follows, in my city at least:
1. AT&T's coverage is a lot better
2. Rollover minutes are great and every company should have them.
3. Prices are just the same as everyone else, except for prepaid which is why I was on t-mobile, but the crappy reception was a problem.
I know they handled the iphone launch pretty badly but besides that, what's the beef?
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Dion said 1:22PM on 9-25-2007
A agree with ml12
Rollover minutes are great...too bad minutes from the first month don't count, =-(
Additionally, AT&T gave me a free $40 credit just for calling to complain about the fact that no one told me that my first months TXT messages were prorated down from 1500 (odd considering they don't prorate first months minutes).
So basically I got my overage charges ($7) and my activation fee covered. AT&T customer service has been WAY better then Verizons (especially when they found out I was switching to AT&T for the jesusPhone).
AT&T has yet to let me down.
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Dion said 1:25PM on 9-25-2007
Additionally, I'm hypothesizing that AT&T reps were told to go out of their way to please us iPhone customers, considering we were forced to "choose" this network.
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