Chuck's Blog

AT&T 25$ prepaid refill card

SIM cards are used by carriers to identify a phone, store its contact information, and allow the consumer to use the phone of their choice. But in the U.S. there are unfortunately only a few prepaid carriers that use the GSM network that SIM cards are compatible with.

The carriers with significant coverage I know of are as follows:

• AT&T
• T-Mobile
• 7-Eleven Speak Out Wireless

These three carriers offer varied plans, so if your planning on using one you will need to decide on what is your priority: data, air time, or texting.

Data

AT&T is the only one that offers a prepaid Blackberry style data plan, which starts at 4.99$/mnt for 5MB (???) and 19.99$/mnt for 100MB. While this isn’t much it’s the most your probably going to get out of them at this time.

T-Mobile does offer a good data plan for 1$/day, but it’s only compatible with Sidekick phones. I have heard across the Internet of people having success using other phones with heavily modified settings though.

7-Eleven’s service doesn’t offer a data plan from what I can find. They may support downloading data for a significant fee per kb though.

Air time

Each one of these services offers fairly good airtime plans, it just depends on whether your priority is just airtime or not. Package deals are available, and most of the time you can get unlimited evening and weekends. I won’t go into details because these plans are just so various.

Coverage also makes the plans vary in usability.

Messaging

I’m referring to MMS (or text messages) when I say messaging just so we have things straight. I’m not going to get into international texting since things get really fuzzy there.

AT&T offers three plans when it comes to texting: a 4.99$/mnt plan for 200 messages, a 9.99$ one for 1000, and a 19.99$ one for unlimited.

T-Mobile surprised me with their plan availability for texting: none other than the sidekick plan (Which is unlimited). So if you don’t have a sidekick it will cost you $0.10 each to send and $0.05 each to receive.

7-Eleven doesn’t have plans available from what I could find. So you have to pay between 5-4 cents a text either way for domestic texts.

Overall

Air time really varies depending on where you need coverage, so there is no solid winner there.

AT&T wins for data, since it’s the only one that offers a roughly 20$/mnt data plan. 100mb’s may not be much, but it works for basic emailing.

AT&T and T-Mobile tie when it comes to text messaging. Why? Well, because for about 30$/mnt T-Mobile gives you unlimited data and texting with a Sidekick device, which is cheaper than AT&T’s data plan combined with their texting plan. But since T-Mobile’s plan only works with a Sidekick they effectively tie.

You may even be lucky enough to have a dual SIM phone, where you could have data setup for one SIM, and airtime for the other. But if all else fails there’s always contracted plans.