“It turns out there’s an under-the-radar way to shave serious money off your monthly cellular bill — if you’re willing to make a sacrifice,” Alex Fitzpatrick reports for TIME Magazine.
“T-Mobile offers an unadvertised cellular plan that costs about $20 a month, the Wall Street Journal reports,” Fitzpatrick reports. “The catch? It only includes unlimited texting and 2GB of mobile data — no voice service. That’s right: It’s a phone plan that doesn’t let you make any calls. (911 is still available for emergencies.)”
MacDailyNews Take: Wait, we’re consistently under 2GB per month on our iPhone units and we hardly ever make voice calls – it’s all texting, some email, etc. – we only need mobile data, not voice.
“The plan is meant for the hard of hearing, who would otherwise have to pay for a service they don’t need,” Fitzpatrick reports. “But T-Mobile doesn’t require a doctor’s note or anything like that to sign up. Anyone can waltz into one of the company’s stores and get the deal.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Hold on, we’re off to the T-Mobile store…
Question, please: If mobile data is included then … would not Google Voice work on this system?
Yes. I’ve been using the free magicJack app for years.
As well as FaceTime Audio right?
On a family plan of 10 lines we pay an average of $22 on T-Mobile including unlimited talk, text, and 2GB data.
I might as well get that for my kids because it would probably take an act of God to get them to actually talk or even pick up the damn phone.
Anyone else have similar type kids.
I did similar to this in the UK.
Unlimited data, 12GB of tethering, 200 mins and unlimited texts -£20 a month.
At today’s exchange rate that would be about US$34 a month. 🙂
Alternatively my deal with GiffGaff in the UK offers 250 mins of talk, free calls to others on the same network, unlimited texts, and 500MB data for £7.50 per month ( less than US $11 ).
On our cellular iPads, we have a data only deal where we get 500MB of data for £5 ( just over $7 ). The company offers a range of data only or voice and data packages with the most expensive one costing £20 ( $29 ) where you get unlimited everything.
As much of our data use away from home is via WiFi, we rarely exceed the 500MB monthly allowance.
Can i sign up using my ipad!
You can get 500 MB for your iPad for free at T-Mo. No contract.
Even better, use iPod and add free MagicJack and you have a very nice inexpensive phone with very few limitarions. and several nice colors.
You can’t put a SIM card into an iPod.
Yes, in fact T-Mobile is launching a whole set of various plans that include NO talk minutes at all. And with FaceTime, SkypeOut, Viber, WhatsApp and myriad other voice-based apps out there, there are plenty of alternative ways of making voice calls over data.
The most important thing about these plans is that these are actually unlimited data plans, all of them. The GB limit refers to 4G speeds. If you burn through them, the rest of the month goes down to GPRS (“2G”), but you still have enough bandwidth for VOIP calls on FaceTime or similar. In other words, there is absolutely no reason you would ever need a voice component of the plan.
Consumer Cellular + the magicJack app <$15 a month – uses the AT&T LTE system. magicJack is FREE for life.
Estonia – Tele2, 5GB 4,5G data, 10h voice, 100 sms. 4€
tervitust!
Why does this even exist except as a way to get people to part with their money? What distinguishes data bits n bytes from those that compose voice bits n bytes?
If you had read the story, you’d know the plan was designed for the Deaf.
Voice is more time dependent, could you imagine if your calls buffered for 50ms every 10,000ms? choppy sound if lots of people were on the network, and then imagine if the throttle hit……. not a happy caller
In the UK there is a plan offered by 3 ( 3G Hutchinson Mobile) for Pay As You Go sims – 3p per minute for voice, 2p per text, 1p per MB.
If like me you use your phone principally as a phone and infrequently at that, it makes the monthly phone bill just disappear.
Has anybody had any luck making this switch? I’m on with a Tmobile rep who doesn’t know anything about this?
Update- they just figured it out and made the change. Eureka! They also offer a 6GB data/text only for $35 p/month. However, with the generous way Tmobile counts data (unlimited music streaming and many video doesn’t count against your 2 GB bucket) 2 GB should be fine for us.