Yikes!? Are smart phone plans REALLY this expensive?

[shortbun]

We added two Iphones to our plan and two of the phones stayed 'regular' with no data plan. I have one of the data plan phones and I love it. I've talked extensively to customer service and onsite reps so I'm sure we have the least expensive program for what our capabilities are. Five phones, two with data plans, we pay $240 plus taxes and service. Our phones have helped us quickly more than a few times.

 

[sjs314]

I am another who was surprised of the cost when my old "dumb" phone died in December. I was with T-Moble previously with 600 mins + text for around $51 a month. I also had a personal hotspot with AT&T for my Internet @ $50 for 5GB

New Plan

AT&T Shared Data with 10GB ($120) with my Hotspot ($20) my iPhone4 ($30)

Total per month $170 + Tax but now I have plenty of Data(GB) per month without worrying about overage charges

Not happy with the added cost but can live with the cost to have a smart phone now

 

[erin1715]

We have a Verizon plan with 5 phones, 4 smart ones and one dumb one. I refused to let me daughter take an upgrade in December because Verizon would switch us to the "share everything" plan. The new plan would cost me an extra $50-70 per month for less data, and we are already paying paying $250 a month. We told our son that if he wanted a smart phone we had to purchase it in early June last year before the share everything plan was rolled out, and he declined our offer. Well, guess who wants an iphone now? And guess who will not be getting one? My oldest daughter and her husband are with Verizon as well, and if they upgrade their phones and switch to the new plan, their bill will only increase by @$10 a month, but for those of us with more than 2 phones on the same plan, it is hard to find a good deal anywhere. We had a seperate plan for my son when my oldest daughter was still on our family plan and Verizon would not allow more than 5 lines per plan. We went through Page plus cellular because they used the Verizon network and we could set it up and pay online for 3 months at a time. You may want to check into that if Verizon service is good in your area.

I have been doing my research on Page Plus and that seems to be my best option because of the great Verizon coverage, but lately I've seen people having trouble activating their iphones with Page Plus. Have you done so recently? I guess worse case scenario is I buy an unlocked iphone and can't activate it with Page Plus, then I just use it for Verizon anyway.

 

[disney1990]

Smart phones and Data Plans are too expensive for our budget. We have 4 adults on our plan (DH, DFIL, DD and me). Our bill runs $138 a month with no data. Nobody misses not having data because they have never had it. We have an IPad which we carry on vacation and can stop at so many places if we need to connect to the internet.

 

[hsmamato2]

I have been doing my research on Page Plus and that seems to be my best option because of the great Verizon coverage, but lately I've seen people having trouble activating their iphones with Page Plus. Have you done so recently? I guess worse case scenario is I buy an unlocked iphone and can't activate it with Page Plus, then I just use it for Verizon anyway.

I you buy carefully,you shouldn't have a problem,I found lots of info on howard forums on various phone info- when you look on Ebay,or whatever, it will usually state it works for PP... we have a little store in town that will get it going if needed, but I had no issues- I bought a used droid from ebay last year,listed as working on PP,called and activated with no problems! The verizon coverage can't be beat around here....( I tend to turn my data off when I don't need it, which is most of the time anyway so it's perfect for me)

 

[angierae]

We have four phones (3 smart phones, one dumb phone) on a Verizon plan that switched to "Share Everything" in January when I got my iPhone. We have the 6GB of data every month (the most we ever used was 4.(something) so we went with the six to be safe. I am the biggest data hogger in our family (there's wifi at my daughter's school and my husband has wifi at work, I do not) and we still haven't used more than 4G in two billing cycles.

Our price stayed pretty much the same. Yes, we're paying about $250 a month for cell phones, but it is something that we consider worth it. But we were realy worried about the shared data and it hasn't been an issue at all for us.

 

[TnTWalter]

Vmobile $35 unlimited data and text and 300 min talk
$45 1200 talk and unlimited data andn text
$55 unlimited everything

Chitchatmobile $9.99 250 voice; 4000 txt
They have a $19.99 unlimited talk/text
data options:
light data [100mb] $5; $10 250mb; and up
Picture mail addl. $3 but just add pic to email or do over wifi

Ecomobile $30 unlimited talk/text or
$40 unlimited everything

Platinumtel $40 unlimited everything

Tmobile $30 plan with 100 voice and unlimited text and data and
5g data before throttle which is best of the choices. And you can buy extra minutes as needed and/or call using voip, etc. to get extra time.

StraightTalk $45 unlimited everything.

So all good otpions that you can use with smartphones.

 

[erin1715]

Vmobile $35 unlimited data and text and 300 min talk
$45 1200 talk and unlimited data andn text
$55 unlimited everything

Chitchatmobile $9.99 250 voice; 4000 txt
They have a $19.99 unlimited talk/text
data options:
light data [100mb] $5; $10 250mb; and up
Picture mail addl. $3 but just add pic to email or do over wifi

Ecomobile $30 unlimited talk/text or
$40 unlimited everything

Platinumtel $40 unlimited everything

Tmobile $30 plan with 100 voice and unlimited text and data and
5g data before throttle which is best of the choices. And you can buy extra minutes as needed and/or call using voip, etc. to get extra time.

StraightTalk $45 unlimited everything.

So all good otpions that you can use with smartphones.

There are many options, but I'm not sure that they're all good ones in that, 1) The coverage may be terrible on many of them and, 2) I specifically want to use the iphone, not just any smart phone.

But I do appreciate you taking the time to lay out the options. I have been really looking into PagePlus, specifically on the Howard forums and it seems so complicated just to get a phone activated and working with data, that I just might bite the bullet and use Verizon, which I know is guaranteed to work. Ugh....