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Comment by TrainedMonkey | Hacker News Reader

Google is making a big play on smartphone for everyone model. Now if they could get carriers to agree to cheaper data model, their hand would be really strong. To some extent this favors T-Mobile and other no-discount/cheaper plans carriers.

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Google's play is to bypass the carrier altogether, which they will do as soon they get broadband in many homes and use their own souped up wifi routers to create a network that will allow you to be forever internet-connected. And when you are not, they will roam.

I think this is Google's long term plan, and its a pretty great one. You will literally be connected anywhere on the globe with Google Fiber based HetNet wireless, and wifi beamed down on the rest of the earth from Balloons.

I am not sure balloons are viable. For short term disaster sure, but long term is too much maintenance. Besides worsening hurricane/wind trend is likely to continue. I think they might just deploy network of cube sats, and figure out low power satellite uplink if they are really shooting for global connectivity.

That's what Republic Wireless does now, and they just launched with the Moto X at a surprisingly low price: https://republicwireless.com/

Be careful with Republic Wireless. They are completely anti-rooting, require customized proprietary software to use their service, and you're out of luck if you want to cancel the service after 30 days.

I can see why they're anti-rooting--they need to be able to offload voice + SMS traffic to wifi, and they can't do that if you've flashed a custom ROM or whatever. I think they're hoping to eventually have the wifi calling stuff packaged as an app, so it could be installed on whatever ROM (or device) you wanted. But for now, it's integrated with the android system at a very low level.

> you're out of luck if you want to cancel the service after 30 days.

Sort of. There's no early termination fee, so in that way it's better than legacy carriers. But you can't take your RW phone and use it on any other network, so you are out the cost of the device.

They don't need to. You can get an unlimited data + 100 minute no contract plan from t-mobile for $30/month.

Where's that? I can only find $50, $60 and $70 plans:

http://www.t-mobile.com/cell-phone-plans/individual.html

They sell it through wal*mart

http://www.walmart.com/ip/Tmobile-30-Wireless-Airtime-Card/1...

It's listed on this page (about 2/3rds of the way down):

http://prepaid-phones.t-mobile.com/prepaid-plans

I believe you have to buy the SIM card and then go to this page to pick your plan:

http://prepaid-phones.t-mobile.com/prepaid-activate

Look at "Which plan is right for you" on their pre-paid site: http://prepaid-phones.t-mobile.com/prepaid-plans

Go here: http://prepaid-phones.t-mobile.com/sim-card. Check your device, and once you know which SIM type you need, click the "Add to Cart" under "Phone".

I literally just did this, so the timing of this post is nice. Even more nice is that they are waiving the $10 SIM card fee right now.

You buy the actual plan after you get the SIM and activate it. I don't know what they charge for activation, if at all.

So it's not available to current T-Mobile customers unless you want to change your number, then?

Move your number to Google voice

Then you can use your unlimited data for calls (if I'm not mistaken)

I used switching to that t-mobile plan as an opportunity to set up google voice. At least now I can cover future number changes.

Port out to another prepaid, then back in.

I wrote about how to get it.

http://ngokevin.com/blog/tmobile/

You have a typo, "100 minutes of text".

It's not 4G though... If you want 4G, it's at least $50, $60 or more for more data.

Not true, I have the $30 plan with a Nexus 5 I bought from the Google Play store. I get 4G LTE speeds no problem.

I'm on the verge of doing the exact same thing. On that plan are you able to use any of that data for tethering or mobile hotspot? A customer service rep said you can use all of your "up to 5GB" 4G data for tethering if you want, but I found that a little hard to believe.

Tethering is not officially allowed, you have to spend another $15/month for it.

It's possible to tether anyway, but YMMV - it's through workarounds like using only HTTPS, setting up a VPN, or changing your desktop user agent.

http://i.imgur.com/tKZMSAK.png

http://imgur.com/Ttp553B

Republic Wireless has a $40/month 4G plan with the Moto X: https://republicwireless.com/plans

Unlimited 2G data. LTE is limited to 5GB per month. I've hit their throttle before, and while it's nice that you don't go dark, it's not for normal use.

Not many people can use 5GB of data in a month. I'd say "normal" use is nowhere near 5GB.

5Gb on a handset without tethering isn't "normal" use, even with LTE...

It depends. 1.5 hours of facetime will use ~1gb, and streaming 1 hour of music every day will run at 1gb over the month. Add browsing during commute and you're getting close. It's probably not "normal" in the sense of average, but for the heavy consumer, they will have to moderate their usage.

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