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Comment by whathappenedto | Hacker News Reader

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whathappenedto

Prepaid is not cheaper if you are smart about your plan. With prepaid, you cannot

1) Get the "standard" 20% corporate/education discount that most phone companies offer

2) Get a family plan which can be much cheaper

3) Get data for cheap (t-mobile offers 200mb data for $10/month)

4) Get free nighttime and weekend minutes

5) Get free calling within the phone network

Most people on prepaid could get a better deal without prepaid if they shopped around a bit.

I would love it if people stopped the misconception that "prepaid is cheaper" and instead realized that different plans are better for different phone usage habits.

Update: formatting, changed one instance of the word "on contract" to "without prepaid"

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I pay $45 a month for unlimited everything on the AT&T network (Straight Talk). Nobody else can even remotely come close to that.

The absolute cheapest postpaid plan any carrier offers is $40 a month plus bullshit fees and taxes - even if you knock 20% (which is an abnormally high discount - and its especially disingenuous to suggest a 20% discount in a startup forum where people almost certainly aren't affiliated with a company of sufficient size to receive such a discount) off of that, that's $32 + 'fees' and taxes plus the cost of an SMS and/or data plan. Your 'free' features start looking a lot less competitive at that point.

I've seen 15-25% off for being a member of a variety of institutions, like credit unions, AAA, costco, universities, etc., many of which hacker news members are a part of. And you can save a lot with a family plan by adding $5 additional lines. Walmart has a $30/month plan, and T-mobile has $35/month plans.

Like I said, it depends how you shop around and your usage habits.

ps: I don't think "disingenuous" is the word you're looking for here

>3) 200mb for $10/month

That's pretty expensive. Here in the UK on Tesco mobile (uses O2's (Telefonica) network) prepaid/pay as you go, £5 gets me 500mb for a month.

I guess data must be more pricey in the states.

Typical "unlimited" data plans are $30/month. Considering that I use my data freely, and I never use 200mb, I wouldn't benefit from an increase in limit. But you're right that £5 is a little less than $10.

2.5x the data for about $2 less. But not in the same country :)

The U.S. has surprisingly expensive phone, data and texting costs.

Just from this thread, for the same U$ 10/month you say is "cheap" from T-mobile to get 200 mb:

Vietnam - 2.5 GB (500 mb for U$ 2)

China - 300 mb data PLUS 90 mins phone

UK - "unlimited" data and text (Giffgaff), 1 gb (Tesco) or 500 mb (Vodafone)

Uruguay - 384 mb (Antel)

Australia - 600 mb (Soul/TPG)

People are paying the mobile carriers, so they don't feel much need to cut prices. Last week, I saw someone here reconsidering whether it was worth it to keep 3 data devices activated on Verizon's network (apparently a couple of ipads, in addition to cell phones...).

The cost of texting is pretty overblown, the people that are sending the most texts almost certainly have a bundle that is essentially unlimited, for others, $2 a month for 20 texts is cheaper than $5 or $10 for 20 texts (Sure, $24 a year can still be made to look expensive).

You're off. I'm doing the non-contract t-mobile thing in the US. I have the exact 200MB/$10/mo thing you mentioned, as well as the free nighttime/weekend minutes and free in-tmobile calling. Just ask them and they'll give it to you.

I should have used the word "non-prepaid" instead of "contract". The non-contract t-mobile thing is not a prepaid plan.

1) Discounts do not apply to "features", like data and text, which for most are now 50% or more of the monthly fee. 2) Family plans are rarely cheaper, unless your family members do not use their phones. 3, 4, 5) Irrelevant for unlimited prepaid plans.

I'm not sure there is a "misconception" -- the majority of users consume less than 2GB of data a month, so prepaid is cheaper option and can offer the exact same coverage (Straight Talk AT&T SIM).

I use a prepaid T-Mobile plan that's $30/month for 100 minutes and 5GB of data. I tend to use about 150 minutes a month, so I'm really paying $35ish with overage.

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