Drop your iPhone data plan, keep voice
Sick of paying $20 a month for EDGE? Want to save $240/year? TUAW reader Josh tipped us off to his iPhone News post that reveals that you can now remove it from your plan. If you rarely use EDGE and live around ubiquitous WiFi (like I do), this is a great way to save some money.
I gave this a try myself but my GoPhone account didn't have the on-web option shown here. So I gave AT&T a call. It was, as always, an adventure and although I was told that you had to do this over their IBR IVR voice recognition system, I did find a service agent who was able to help me in person. (The IBR kept putting me in Spanish mode for some reason. Go figure.)
So as of my next billing cycle, my iPhone will now drop its EDGE/Data plan. This means I'm losing visual voicemail and EDGE access. Neither is a big deal for me. I can still check my voicemail by calling my iPhone on a landline, typing star (*) and entering my passcode. It also drops my monthly cost to $29.99/month--more than I want to be paying but not quite so much as before. I keep my AT&T account and, presumably, some level of Apple support and warranty service.
This option won't be of interest to those of you who pull down the big megabytes over EDGE but for us WiFi folks, it's fab.
Update: You may want to install Services.app, a program that allows you to disable EDGE while retaining calls and WiFi service.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
pstelman said 12:36PM on 11-16-2007
I wish I could do the opposite. I love the browser in the iPhone, and use it a lot. I'm not much of a talker, though, and I rarely make phone calls.
Since I still have to carry my Blackberry anyway, since the iPhone is pretty useless as a business and data tool, and the voice quality is much better on the Blackberry (8830), I tend to use it for phone calls.
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Josh said 12:47PM on 11-16-2007
Wait, isn't the lowest price per month $39.99 without the data plan? How did you get yours to $29.99? Is there something I'm missing?
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info said 12:57PM on 11-16-2007
And for you T Mobile iPhone owners, you can run EDGE on your phone by using the $5.99 plan and this very simple hack.
http://jbwebdev.com/blog/want-edge-on-your-t-mobile-iphone/
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jb.seymour said 12:58PM on 11-16-2007
You can also get your voicemail by calling your iPhone number from your iPhone and typing star (*) and entering your passcode. You could always program your number in also so you could get to it quicker.
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Ed said 1:29PM on 11-16-2007
Are you sure you just won't be charged by the byte when the iPhone still pulls down your visual voicemail and checks your e-mail while you're not near WiFi? Is there a way to disable EDGE data on the home AT&T network? I recall they added that feature for roaming.
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n[ate]vw said 1:33PM on 11-16-2007
I second pstelman's question. Is there any way to get a cheaper just-data plan without voice on an unhacked/locked iPhone? I'm not much of a phone person, but near-ubiquitous email and built-in speakers would be nice.
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Mark 2000 said 1:53PM on 11-16-2007
Beware, you guys. A month ago I did this trick where I called retentions and told them I hate the edge. They removed it. But when I called back to get my voicemail box set up they said they couldn't save the changes without putting the data plan back on. I had a whole fight with the supervisor who told me to take my phone back if I didn't want unlimited data. I then called the corporate offices and they also told me to shove it in as nice a way as they could.
Both the dude at the call center and the executive office said that the computer will allow you to take it off but when the billing cycle ends it will get confused and add it back automatically because you have a registered iPhone. I had to tell them I was taking the phone back, activate the sim in my Razor and then put it back in my iPhone. Thats how I went dataless.
If this works that means I can stop hiding my iPhone from ATT. But watch your bills because it may just come back. I'd like you guys to follow up in a month. Thanks!
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Mark 2000 said 1:55PM on 11-16-2007
PS, Ed, you will get charged by the byte unless you call ATT and ask them to block all data and text info from the phone so you cant accidentally use it. Right now when I'm not on wifi the phone lets me know I'm not registered with EDGE.
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Gene Cowan said 1:56PM on 11-16-2007
Seems to me that this is going to cause problems along the lines of what we saw initially with roamers. People who turn off the iPhone EDGE subscription on their accounts will then be paying huge per-K charges as non-subscribers. There is no way to turn off EDGE, so as soon as you leave a hot spot you'll be incurring high charges because the danged thing just keeps accessing the network even if you turn off mail checking, etc. The only way to turn data accessing off is to go into Airplane mode, which defeats the purpose of the phone entirely.
If there was some way to disable EDGE completely in the iPhone, I'd definitely do this because there is no way I'm using $20 worth of EDGE every month. Most of us are paying for service we never use, a brilliant scheme by AT&T which I'm sure helps cover their payments to Apple.
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Steve said 2:02PM on 11-16-2007
And if you want visual voicemail back you can get grand central and use that number. they do visual voicemail through their webpage (plus they have a lot of other awesome features).
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AskTheAdmin said 2:20PM on 11-16-2007
I am on the phone right now... But ATT is giving me an issue about dropping it. I will keep you posted.
http://www.askTheAdmin.com
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Joseph said 2:33PM on 11-16-2007
You do realize that this is violation of the contract you signed with AT&T, and they will likely a) sign you back up with the data plan, which was stated as required when you bought the phone or b) hit you with an ETF.
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Sean O said 2:57PM on 11-16-2007
An Early Termination Fee from AT&T by selecting a Rate Plan feature (no data) offered on the AT&T account control panel? Oooookay...
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jstring said 4:07PM on 11-16-2007
Just a note from a former call-center monkey - it's IVR instead of IBR, as in Interactive Voice Response.
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Russell said 3:18PM on 11-16-2007
FYI, you CAN turn of all edge. I have a hacktivated iPhone with the el cheapo cingular $40 plan. My iPhone can't use edge. I called up cingular and asked them to remove all pay-per use items. I said I don't want texts, DL games, or data. They disabled them on my account. I can't access edge on any phone w/my sim.
Now if I can get an iPhone plan w/o data, that might be worth doing. Not that hacktivating the phone has been a problem, but maybe one day it will be?
The thing I'm worried about however, is I hear I'll loose my corporate discount if I have an "iPhone" plan. :-/ I like my 15% off!
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Fritz Laurel said 4:06PM on 11-16-2007
Why even bother? It's only $20/mo for unlimited usage and then you don't have to do screwy things with voice mail, et al.
I'm all for trying to screw The Man, but this is one area where it's easier to go with the flow, IMHO.
Cheers,
FL
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RHenley said 4:10PM on 11-16-2007
I hacked my iPhone originally because I didn't want AT&T as my carrier, and thought that I could live with wireless access to the internet. This works fine when in a larger city, where one is more familiar with and has more access to available wireless locations.
After traveling with the phone, I decided that it would be a better experience if I could use Edge now and then so that eMail would be more timely rather than having to find an open wireless unit. Or worse yet be forced to pay for access.
After using the phone for a couple of months without Edge access it's clear that with the v1.0.2 phone the device is always set to query Edge whenever it first turns on or wakes up - which was also the big billing experience for roaming AT&T users.
I found the Services app v.67 to not be able to consistently handle the Edge state seamlessly - as Edge will continue to automatically turn back on. Despite the existence of a available wireless connection. The phone appears to be designed to behave this way with that version of the firmware.
I tend to think with limited actual knowledge on the subject, that more recent firmware updates will manage the Edge settings more flexibly than the version I am at ...
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codeman38 said 4:17PM on 11-16-2007
Thirding what pstelman says. 450 minutes of talk time a month is far more than I'd ever use, but I do *lots* of e-mailing and IMing. If there were a way to get an iPhone on a data-only plan (or even trade the voice minutes for SMS, which I do a lot more of than talking), I would save up for one in a heartbeat.
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Justin said 4:45PM on 11-16-2007
Erica-- I wonder if it would be possible to reverse engineer visual voicemail. Do you know if anyone has tried to undertake such a project? It would be great if voicemail could be checked from wifi.. I imagine it uses typical internet connection types.
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ecomm1 said 5:26PM on 11-16-2007
I just removed the data plan from my account on the AT&T Website and then I called AT&T to remove all the pay-per-use features. Now I no longer need to pay the extra $20 per month or worry about any surprise charges. Nice !
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