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Comment by draz | Hacker News Reader

has anybody seen the pricing for this?? outrageous!! http://static.ips.apple.com.edgekey.net/ipa_preauth/content/...

Look specifically at the data plans

If you're talking about the Mobile Share plans, its because they are (1) for entire families and (2) include unlimited voice and text along with them. Essentially you'd pick out a plan and that would be your monthly bill each month. Everyone would draw from the same data cap though. Given that, those prices don't seem particularly outrageous compared to what a typical family of 4-5 might pay now.

!!!

Why is Verizon so popular in the U.S.? I see no (absolutely no) reason why someone should choose Verizon over Sprint... Verizon plans are about a hundred times more expensive.

Coverage. Especially in the west.

Sprint roams on VZ's network.

Sprint users get free access to Verizon's network until 2016.

I know they have a 3G agreement, but do they use Verizon's LTE network too? That makes a huge difference.

The agreement is technology agnostic. I had to escalate up a few times and after some persistance, got a call back from someone who was engineering level.

There is a significant difference in network coverage and bandwidth speeds. Also, until recently Sprint device selection severely lagged both AT&T and Verizon as the iPhone and many top Android models were missing.

There are many factors for choosing your carrier outside of price.

Sprint has almost no LTE coverage currently. They bet heavily on WiMax, which flopped. They're working to rapidly fix that, but they're way behind for now.

blame the carriers. they know iphone's target market has money. buy an unlocked phone and use it with a prepaid data plan.

>a prepaid data plan

Is there even such thing in US? Also, most likely they are not going to sell nano-SIMs for pre paid plans.

Surprisingly, there are quite a few prepaid data plans from major carriers in the US. For example, I'm using T-Mobile's 4G Monthly plan which provides me with 5GB of data for $30 a month, no contract.

You can actually get a nano sim from T-Mobile, all you need is the IMEI number from the sim in order to register for their 4G prepaid plan.

There are other carriers too, like boostmobile, cricket, virgin, etc.

Nano SIM is a new SIM size for iPhone 5, I doubt you can get it anywhere right now since iPhone 5 hasn't shipped yet. You probably were referring to Micro SIM which was introduced for iPhone 4.

Contrast with (for example) the UK:

http://store.apple.com/uk/browse/home/shop_iphone/family/iph...

hm. is this the first time that Verizon and AT&T are basing their plans solely on data allowances alone? Text & voice are both unlimited under each and every plan.

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