<p>I have Verizon now and I am looking to buy another smartphone (I want to be less dependent on Verizon and I think AT&T has better overseas coverage). I looked att AT&T yesterday and was disappointed: the text message plan is $20 month. Text message is free on my Verizon plan. If I want hotspot it will cost a lot more.</p>
<p>abasket, look at your bill online and check out the amount of data you are actually using on all phones. You can try a lower amount, use wifi and monitor and then update before the billing period is up if you need to.</p>
<p>$160/month, 3 smart phones on T-Mobile family plan, unlimited texts and data, 750 shared talk minutes, but unlimited within T-mobile (so no charge for voice calls to eachother). </p>
<p>CostCo can be a good place to go compare plans and phones. They have all major carriers at the same booth.</p>
<p>LBowie, that sounds similar to my old Verizon plan. I couldn’t do with so few minutes, however and it is the increase in minutes that really spikes the price on those plans.</p>
<p>Only thing with Costco, no iPhones. :(</p>
<p>[The</a> New Verizon Wireless Shared Data Plans Start June 28th, Here’s How They Work](<a href=“http://www.androidpolice.com/2012/06/12/the-new-verizon-wireless-shared-data-plans-explained/]The”>http://www.androidpolice.com/2012/06/12/the-new-verizon-wireless-shared-data-plans-explained/)
The Verizon shared data plan is a new release. Current data usage also shows on the paper bill. And, yes, the advice is to use wifi wherever possible, via settings. I just spoke with them. Love the staffers, hate the co. I’d go up $1 in cost- before even ading an S phone. Yuck.</p>
<p>OP, we switched to a Verizon Share Everything Plan a couple of months ago. We pay $190 per month for 3 smartphones. My husband has his own company plan. Verizon offered us a discount through my H’s company so you could check if Verizon offers your company a discount for the shared data plan. If we didn’t have the discount it would be about $205 per month. </p>
<p>We are in the Share Everything Plan Unlimited Talk & Text and 6G shared data. Whenever we go to a place where there is Wi-Fi network a window pops up in our iPhones to click on any Wi-Fi service. If it is free Wi-Fi (such as Starbucks, Macy’s) there will be no lock symbol beside it so you can click on it. Otherwise, you have to enter the network’s password. Allow your phone to save “known networks” such as the ones above and your home or school’s Wi-Fi. Your phone will automatically use the known network when you are in the area.<br>
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<p>This will not work with my kids. My D uses about 6000 texts per month.
6000 *.20=$1,200/month/kid 
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<p>For minutes, it’s about 1000 minutes.
1000 * .25 = $250/month/kid</p>
<p>So far we have used a little over 2G data/6G per month because I told them to embrace free Wi-Fi. However, I encouraged them to use their laptops and a secure network when accessing their banks’ websites. They may unknowingly connect to a “free” Wi-Fi hotspot and now they are connected to a hacker’s computer where the hacker can have access to password and other info.</p>
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<p>This is something everyone should do right now. If you work in education, for the government, or likely for a large company there may be a substantial discount you can get with your phone carrier. My dad’s a teacher and was able to get 15% off by faxing them a copy of his school’s ID. My girlfriend got 10% (remember, this is every month) off because she works for a department of the city.</p>
<p>Has anyone here had experience with the discount carriers out there? Mostly ones like MetroPCS, Virgin Mobile, Cricket, etc.</p>
<p>We also get a discount through work at Verizon. Three iPhones- one unlimited data- two @ 2gb. One dumb phone. 700 minutes at $180 ( inc all the taxes- we get up to 25% off supposedly)</p>
<p>Unlocked can be a good idea, but we all wanted iPhones& you can’t get compatible w Verizon unlocked. We also save money by not having cable or a landline & we need the data plan!
I also don’t think you can set it up without one.</p>
<p>A friend went with T-Mobile but coverage wasn’t great in our area. He is now with PagePlus and he likes it quite a bit. They use Verizon’s network. I’d rather stick with AT&T or Verizon for their coverage.</p>
<p>Someone else I know likes them too - apparently they are skimpy on data though.</p>
<p>I have a discount available at Verizon ($20 unlimited data) but it has to be on an individual plan - the phone can’t be on a shared/family plan.</p>
<p>go prepaid, free WIFI on campus and at home. D pays $25/mth for ATT android smart phone, unlimited texts, 250 minutes. Son texts less and pays $10 for 1,000 texts and about $10 in calls a month for his smart phone. I really don’t see the point of paying 100’s of $$ a month for a phone.</p>
<p>There are ways to limit data usage on the smartphone. Certain apps on the phone are data hog without giving you much benefits. If you have android phone, look into app like droid wall and you can selectively turn off the data usage per app basis. For example, google play store is a huge data hog that constantly look for updates and sync up your phone and all the downloaded apps over the data connection. With droid wall you can turn off that particular app access to the data network while the rest can have normal access. You can turn back on easily whenever you want the app to have access to data.</p>
<p>With droid wall, I always enable access to wifi for all apps and let only a few apps have access to wireless network data. With this I can get away with using $12 per month plan on pageplus with 250 minutes of voice, 250 texts and 10MB of data. I also use google voice and grooveip to do wifi voice calling and texting when I have access to wifi which I do for the better part of the day at the office and at home basically free and without taxing the minutes and text on the pageplus plan.</p>
<p>Here’s a guide for similar setup:</p>
<p>[[GUIDE</a>] Smartphone Service for just $30/month - xda-developers](<a href=“[GUIDE] Smartphone Service for just $30/month | XDA Forums”>[GUIDE] Smartphone Service for just $30/month | XDA Forums)</p>
<p>I don’t think you have to verify anything for the 15% discounts (just as an FYI). Last year I went to the apple store to upgrade my iPhone and the kid who sold it to me asked me if I qualified for any of the criteria for the discount. I told him I had a registered corporation, but that iPhone would not be use on the buisness account; nonetheless, AT&T still qualified me for the discount</p>
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<p>Thanks for the tip - that is extremely helpful.</p>
<p>josh, I think it all depends on who you’re dealing with at the company. My girlfriend got put through this giant runaround with having to fax them forms (which they said they could only fax(!?!?) to her, then never did), provide a bunch of different forms of proof, and eventually she just got on the phone with someone that said, “Oh, yeah, we just needed a copy of your ID card.” Took about 15 calls and a few months to finally get all of that straightened out.</p>
<p>When I told my dad about the discount he knew what they needed going in and was able to get the discount applied pretty quickly.</p>
<p>Re the work discount, they set up the account through your company email. Afterwards you can manage it through another email if you want.</p>
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<p>I LOVE VM. 3 smartphones, $75 per mo.</p>
<p>I pay $25 a month for unlimited data, text and 300 mins talk with Virgin Mobile. That plan is now $35 for new people, still a great deal.</p>
<p>But you absolutely CAN buy an Android phone for VM and use it on wi-fi only, without activating it. Friends just switched and the son used it on wi-fi for a week or so until the family was ready to start the plan.</p>
<p>VM doesn’t have contracts so will be different than a company like Verizon which is charging you less for the phone upfront so they can get more $ for a two year commitment. I’d think any of the no-contract Android phones would work on wifi without activation.</p>
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<p>One thing Android phones can also do on wifi is use Google Voice + certain apps or Skype for unlimited calls on wifi. You get your own phone number and all that. So if you are really on wifi almost all the time, a prepaid plan with no minutes included could be cheapest of all.</p>
<p>Another happy Virgin Mobile customer here. </p>
<p>Two of us have the $25 plan and one the $35 a month plan. The coverage is good in our area, D has some connection problems around her college. We don’t come close to reaching our limits in phone calls. You can now buy an iPhone at full cost through Virgin although we are still using our Androids. So if coverage is decent in your area and you don’t make a large number of phone calls I think Virgin Mobile is the way to go.</p>
<p>I used Virgin Mobile until I got tired of it–they used Sprint network in my stomping grounds and the coverage wasn’t solid or reliable enough for my needs. </p>
<p>I presently am using an iPhone 4 on Straight Talk service with “unlimited” talk, text, and data for $45/mo–they have me on the AT&T network which works great for me. [Welcome</a> | Straight Talk](<a href=“http://www.straighttalksim.com/]Welcome”>http://www.straighttalksim.com/)</p>