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Comment by strix_varius | Hacker News Reader

If you're willing to pay for a year in advance (which I personally consider a convenience rather than a hassle), you might like the AT&T 12-month prepaid plan:

https://www.att.com/prepaid/multi-month-plans/

$25/month for unlimited talk & text + 16 GB of data each month that rolls over month-to-month.

AT&T's customer support is absolute garbage and migrating to them from T-Mobile was a pain in the ass, but since then it's been simple.

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Huh, I didn't know about this, thanks. I'm on Cricket (which was an MVNO running on AT&T but is now actually AT&T owned), where I pay for $30/month for unlimited talk and text and only 5GB of data.

I rarely go over the data, but if I can pay less for 16GB of data if I pre-pay for the year... I might.

Although cricket is really all-inclusive, no additional taxes or fees, $30 is what my credit card actually gets charged. Is AT&T pre-pay the same?

That ad also has "Reg. 8GB/mo" in grey text, which I don't know what that means... 16GB is promotional for first year, after which it's 8GB? Which would still be fine.

I kind of like having no contract and being able to switch carriers at any time... on the other hand, I literally never switch carriers cause it's a pain.

It would be cool to have Canada included for free again too.

Tax usually ends up being 15 to 20 percent so it will probably be a wash. Online agent can tell you the exact price.

AT&T's websites are complete junk as well. Which you are forced to deal with for any kind of management.

I wish I was able to use the website to sign up. I spent half an hour on their signup flow entering all the fiddly numbers, then got an email saying for some integrity reason my order was cancelled and there was nothing they could do.

I called support and they said the website just didn't like me and I had to sign up by phone, loosing the significant online signup discount. So I spent the next hour and a half repeatedly spelling things out with a phonetic alphabet to someone who only understood a specific kind of formal English before I gave up.

I loved AT&t's network, but leaving them was a Royal pain in the ass. They kept sending me bills for new things after I had closed the account, and customer service would barely talk to me since I was leaving anyway

I had to leave AT&T when I moved to California. It was great in the East, but it seems like they don't understand that mountains attenuate the signal -- I had literally 0 bars in my neighborhood because the tower is on the other side of a hill. Not to mention anytime you drive through a canyon, which is almost anytime you're going to the next town/suburb/valley over, which is pretty often for a lot of people in Southern California.

Is there any downside to having a prepaid plan as opposed to a normal plan ? For example when the next year comes up, is there any additional hassle to continue with the same account and pay for another year ?

It can have effects on the priority your data receives on the network. This post [0] gives a fair amount of detail - from what I can understand, AT&T gives their prepaid plan the same priority as normal post-paid.

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/NoContract/comments/oaophe/data_pri...

I have the annual plan and while the auto-renew didn't work for me for some reason, I was able to pay the amount due on their website hassle-free. In some cases I think the pre-paid is more advantageous if you're not a heavy data user since it allows tethering up to your data limit and also includes 1 month of data rollover.

I think the biggest thing missing through pre-paid is the ability to finance devices through the carrier (if this is something you do). Additionally, something like the iphone upgrade program isn't supported if you are on a prepaid plan either. Also, if you ever travel internationally the pricing is absurd ($35/WEEK extra for 5GB of data).

That said, I get the feeling AT&T isn't thrilled about people that opt for their prepaid plans. Porting my number over required me to wait for hours on hold, their support is horrendous if you ever need to get in touch with them for something, and you have to manage your account through an entirely different website that frankly looks like one giant phishing attempt.

> That said, I get the feeling AT&T isn't thrilled about people that opt for their prepaid plans. Porting my number over required me to wait for hours on hold, their support is horrendous if you ever need to get in touch with them for something, and you have to manage your account through an entirely different website that frankly looks like one giant phishing attempt.

Absolutely. I had the same experience & got the same impression.

Honestly, when I'm getting indicators that I'm doing something that a horrible megacorporation dislikes, but enables because it lacks the will to go through the steps to end some particular line-of-business... that's when I feel like I'm doing something right.

I would have expected them to prefer a prepaid plan, they get all the money up front. Isn't that why they give you a discount, to encourage it? But I guess the discount is why they prefer a postpaid plan? Very odd, I wonder why the prepaid plans even exist, or are discounted.

Postpaid plans (the traditional ones which have contracts) usually give discounted or free phone upgrades while prepaid does not, so they can bring the price down.

Ah, right. (Still a mystery why they offer postpaid at that price if they don't want to).

But I think I'll stick with cricket after all. Still has discounted phone upgrades, still with no contract (although the phone can be unlocked from cricket until you've used it a year on cricket, I still prefer that).

(And, of course, to make things even weirder, cricket is owned by AT&T)

Prepaid plans often nickel-and-dime you for small features, although that is starting to happen on normal postpaid plans too.

For example:

- 5G

- Visual voicemail

- Roaming (esp. international)

- Tethering

- Limited to lower video resolutions

- Spam filtering

But in this case, the question is about ATT prepaid. My understanding is that 5G, tethering, and Visual voicemail are included. Not sure about the others.

As I understand it 5G is only included on the unlimited data plans.

I have non-unlimited data and 5G.

For AT&T prepaid, I can verify that all of these work as normal (with a post-paid plan) except for international roaming. I haven't traveled internationally since making the switch, so I don't know about that one.

That said, you can always just buy and pop in a prepaid SIM card if you're traveling for extended periods.

> - 5G

"Luddite", don't need it.

> - Visual voicemail

Built into Android.

> - Roaming (esp. international)

Estoy un gringo.

> - Tethering

Built into Android.

> - Limited to lower video resolutions

My eyes can't see 1080p on a phone screen.

> - Spam filtering

Built into Android.

Roaming is a problem, esp if you are in rural areas. Prepaid is good, if you are in a major metro, and you don't go to rural areas much.

One tangential hassle is situations like Blizzard demanding phone numbers to play games online and not allowing prepaid for some bad reason.

I have yet to run into any such issues. I'm not even sure it would be possible to identify that my ported number, that I've had for ... 17 years?... is prepaid.

But I don't play WoW or anything, so...

My guess is it depends on prepaid carrier. Some of them appear as 'voip' providers. Funny thing is they have no way to detect actual carrier VOIP services like T-Mobile DIGITS as being VOIP.

If it's first party prepaid, Cricket looks the same as AT&T for example. Some carriers do stuff like buy bandwidth.com numbers, these will show up as voip even if it's only usable from a phone plan.

Nice—never knew about this. How would you compare the coverage and speed to T-Mobile? Does it come with Wi-Fi Calling? Looks like it supports hot spot usage.

I cannot think of a reason that a mobile network would not include wifi calling. I presume it is all gain for them to take load off their mobile network?

Cricket only allows WiFi calling on certain devices. I had to switch to Mint to get it working

How do they prevent wifi calling?

WiFi calling in this context doesn't mean any random VoIP app, it means using your same phone number as the cellular service uses. That requires the carrier to be involved on the server side even if your handset is not using the cellular modem. (And it probably is using the cellular modem to some extent even during a WiFi call, to support handover between WiFi and cellular.)

I concur, but carriers do weird things. Some of them will want you to purchase a more expensive plan to get that “feature.”

Verizon prevented two of my unlocked phones (Nexus 6P and Moto G6 Power) from using WiFi calling, likely because I didn't buy them through them. The phones were perfectly capable of it but it was just some carrier config that prevented it. I bought an unlocked Samsung A53 and that is suddenly allowed to use WiFi calling, likely because Verizon sells the exact same model. I went years without WiFi calling despite living in two homes that had awful cell signal. Now I have a phone with the feature but have great home cell signal.

I prepay w/ tmobile for 30/mo. No wifi directly but can use google voice for that.

Anecdotally, coverage and speed in my area are slightly better with AT&T than they were with T-Mobile. Based on actual data, AT&T beats out T-Mobile for coverage and speed across most of the US.

Yes it supports wi-fi calling (my Pixel 6a defaults to that whenever I'm at home). And yes it supports tethering / hot spots.

I recall data overages on AT&T being a festival of excessive fees rather than merely getting throttled, but that was over a decade ago.

Doesn't apply to prepaid. You pay a lump sum of $300 for the year, dont even need an associated credit card.

I've been on an AT&T prepaid plan for over a decade at this point. The price is exactly what's quoted. In a very good way, it's almost like you're not even on an AT&T plan. Just look at how off-brand the (impossible to find) prepaid login portal is: https://www.paygonline.com/ vs https://www.att.com/acctmgmt/login

Frankly, I think it's wonderful. I never have issues with the reception, service, or speed. I buy a new phone in full when I have to (4-5 years?), and just move the SIM over.

However, AT&T's commission-based store employees will provide dreadful service when they find out you're prepaid. Prepaid clients rarely buy anything. I recommend delaying sharing that knowledge as much as possible :)

Does the data include tethering?

Yes

Huh that's pretty good. I pay about $18/mo for 2GB and no tethering on an AT&T MVNO. Seems like an extra $7 to never have to worry about data, and to be able to tether would be worth it.

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