Four months ago AT&T declared war on us. Until then I'd had both children on our family plan, using old out-of-contract (but not unlocked!) iPhones with voice only service. On a day of infamy, AT&T hit us with mandatory $30/month data plans. Our too high monthly mobile bills went much higher.
That's when I fought back. Four weeks later, I declared victory. I'd slashed our monthly phone bills, not least by replacing SMS texting with iMessage (even to the SIM-less iPhone 4) and rare paid SMS. As a side-effect of operation vengeance I even picked up a new iPhone 4S - iMessage and a new subsidy made it cost-effective.
There was only one downside. Number 2 son loved using my iPhone 4 as an iPod Touch, but he no longer had voice service. He really didn't care about that, but we're heading to DC for a family trip. He has a knack for getting lost, so I wanted to be able to phone him. I decided to follow up on an H2O wireless plan (AT&T reseller) I'd considered last November ...
Giving your old iPhone to your kid: working around AT&T's mandatory data plan
I'm planning to test a H2O Wireless SIM Card (no jailbreak or unlocking for AT&T phones) ... there's a MyH2O app on the App Store. However the H2O wireless cards expire after 30 days, so they're better suited to a heavy voice/data user than to our guys; there's really no saving over our family plan....
I dropped into Best Buy to check out the options. I found two quite different H2O plans:
- a voice and SMS only plan with 90 day expiration. $10 price includes $7 of talk time.
- a voice/SMS/data plan with a 5-30 day expiration depending whether payment is per-minute or per-month [1]. Not clear if $10 package includes any services.
I had to make a quick call, and based on the premise that I should only buy what I need now, I went for the voice/SMS only. [2] For you, dear reader, I suggest carefully studying the cost of the new $100 1 year expiration option for the voice/data plan. It's not clear how one switches from voice/SMS to voice/data, I suspect it involves buying a new SIM card and switching the old number (see Help, My Account)
Briefly, it worked. Here's what I did after I bought the card (the procedures for data plan support are slightly more involved, but I'm only writing on what worked for me):
- Went to a local "World of Wireless" shop and paid them $5 to punch out a micro-SIM from the H2) standard SIM [3]
- Followed the directions and went to H2OWirelessNow.com/activate
- Registered, providing my Yahoo.com (junk) email and my Google Voice number. Maybe overly protective, I noticed that the 'spam-me' checkbox was opt-in, which is commendable.
- After I registered Chrome "sat there". I had to lick 'Activate" on the menu to get to the next step.
- From Activate I entered the ActFast code, desired area code, and then city.
- I then picked up my confirmation mail from Yahoo.com account. It said the phone would be ready in 10 minutes and told me my new number.
- About 6 minutes later I put the micro-SIM in the iPhone and powered it up. On startup it said H2O in the connection bar.
- I tried phoning out, but nothing happened. So I called into the new phone -- that worked. After that I could call out too.
- iMessage still worked (yay).
- Dial *777# send to check account balance and expiration. It said my balance was $6.55 and it would expire on 5/5/12 (60 days, not 90!)
- Tested MyH2O.app - worked quite well to show balance. I found a very brief call cost about 5 cents or so.
- I connected to the recharge page and added $10. That brought my total to $16.96 and moved the expiration to 5/4/2012 (90 days)
I'm pleased. I may add $10 every few months, that will likely cover Number 2's use of the iPhone 4 -- at a wee fraction of what AT&T was charging us with a mandatory and unwanted data plan [4].
The plan includes voice mail [6], thought Apple's elegant voice mail won't work without a data plan and accessing voice mail uses up plan minutes. Instead I configured my son's Google Voice number to be the voice mail service [5]. If he misses a call he gets an SMS notification with a message transcription, and an email with a link to the voice file.
At this time, the experiment looks promising.
- fn -
[1] That's what it said on the package. Later, visiting the H2O site, it seemed there were more data plan options than the package suggested -- including a new $100 payment that takes a year to expire -- reminds me of the plan a friend used with his Android phone.
[2] One fringe benefit -- no data plan means less concern about Apple's fake parental controls.
[3] WOW is a different scene from AT&T stores. This is a cash-centric business. Maybe some other sites will cut the micro-SIM for free, or you could try cutting down the card with a razor blade, but Dawayne did it with flair and the card fit my son's iPhone 4 perfectly. Well worth the $5.
[4] It's even cheaper than the $10/month added line phone (plus $4 fees/taxes) we used to have -- and SMS is cheaper. Of course AT&T may terminate this loophole any day now, but they can't force a data rate on us. They can only close off a revenue source; that's hard to do when SMS is going away and desperation is setting in.
[5] Our family has worked from a free Google Apps and family domain for five years. It's trivial now to give each family member a Google Voice account. Within GV there's an option to 'add GV' to any verified phone, makes it the answering service.
[6] The setup directions are poorly written and, I suspect, might be partly in error. I didn't try though.
See also:
Mine
- AT&T and the mandatory iPhone tax - even out of contract phones must pay 11/2011
- Giving your old iPhone to your kid: working around AT&T's mandatory data plan 11/2011
- The Gordon vs. AT&T iPhone war - Conclusion 11/30/2011
- Turning an iPhone into an iPod touch - keep the original SIM! 11/28/2011
- Configuring Google Voice as mobile phone voice mail 9/2009
- The iPhone - Android cost difference is getting large 10/2011
- iMessage use on an AT&T iPhone without a SIM card (iPod Touch mode) 11/30/2011
- iPhone micro: How SMS pricing is accelerating the smartphone transition 11/24/2011
- The fear that's driving AT&T's smartphone data plan policies 11/2011
H2O site
- H2O Wireless general setup (https://www.h2owirelessnow.com)
- H2O-Config iPHone setup (data plan only)
- App Store - MyH2O - check balance, rechartge with PIN
- Confusing! Minute Plans at $10 for 30 days? With data? - interesting ...
- Help for talk, text
Other