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Comment by jerrya | Hacker News Reader

My Nexus One, and several little cheapo tablets I have make free outoing calls over wifi and receive incoming calls using GrooveIp (which hooks into Google Voice).

The Nexus One can also make GrooveIp calls over 3G, and I have it also set up using sipgate to receive sip calls, but also receive "real world" phone number calls using a free phone number from ipkall.

It all works so well, that I've considered just buying a Xoom LTE tablet, and using that as my primary phone. The only reason I've decided against this, is that sometimes, I really want a phone I can stuff into a pocket.

What is intriguing about this article is the mention of a $40 unlimited data plan from T-Mobile.

Is that for real? Does that still exist?

I assume it's not LTE, but HSPA+.... but still, that has me thinking....

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The $40 unlimited plan would seem to either not exist, or be this 2Gb plan with reduced speeds after 2Gb: http://www.t-mobile.com/shop/plans/mobile-broadband-plans.as...

Last night, I determined an hour of netflix on my at&t nexus is the better half of a gig, and twice that on a xoom lte I am testing. 2Gb of data is nothing -- but that does seem to be the $40 "unlimited" plan, in which unlimited means throttled speeds after 2Gb.

I ran my Nexus One off the unlimited $40/mo data-only plan for its first two years and saved around $USD2000 vs buying subsidized, but it appears that they dropped it in favour of the $50/mo plan. You'd still save a bundle vs the subsidized phone+full plan over the life of a 2-year contract.

I'd always get the weirdest looks when I went in to a T-Mobile shop since I was grandfathered in to the old plan and they had never seen it, so that was always fun.

You can also get a plain old bring-your-own-phone pay by the month plan from T-Mobile for $30/month that gives you 100 minutes of voice, unlimited texts, and sorta-unlimited data (1st 5GB at 4G and then it degrades)

Can you provide a link? Best I can find on T-Mobile is "First 100 MB at up to 4G speed" for $50/month.

http://prepaid-phones.t-mobile.com/monthly-4g-plans

It's the one with this disclaimer: "New activations only. Available exclusively in-store at Walmart, on Walmart.com, and T-Mobile.com."

They also released this $200 phone to go along with the plan: http://www.engadget.com/2011/10/26/samsung-exhibit-ii-4g-to-...

I was tethering my old Nexus One to my Roku for a couple of days when I moved; it was enough to push me over the soft cap. Believe me when I say that their throttling is more than noticeable. It is worse than Edge.

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