When shopping for the best deal on prepaid wireless plans are one of the cheapest ways to get a smartphone and not be locked into a contract. Sure, all these carriers offers some sort of upgrade plan where you pay a monthly fee or just make payments on the smartphone over time with upgrades up to twice a year (Verizon Edge, T-Mobile Jump, etc) but you’re still locked into a contract. You’re not going to get into a free phone from any of these carriers.
Besides, the phone is the cheap part. Assuming you’re at $100 a month for smartphone contract, you could be looking at a $2400 cellular phone bill over 2 years. But, if you go prepaid you can get the same service for about half price if not lower and then you can use the savings to get a better prepaid phone. Here’s a look at some interesting pre paid wireless plans as we near the end of 2013 and the beginning of 2014.
Verizon
Verizon offers 2 different prepaid wireless plans: One is $60.00 a month and the other is ten bucks more at $70.00 a month. Both plans offer unlimited talk and text. The difference in price is due to the difference in monthly data with the cheaper plan giving you 2gb of data and the pricier option comes with 4GB monthly
T-Mobile
T-Mobile has a few prepaid wireless plan option with pretty much all plans due to their ‘uncarrier’ pricing where they offer no contract choice for all phones (you can buy the phone outright or you can make monthly payments. If you buy monthly, you can cancel the plan at any time but you have to pay off the phone when you cancel. The plans from T-Mo are $50, $60 &$70.00 options with, like Verizon, the only difference being the amount of data included – 500mb, 2.5GB or ulimited. There’s another option thats a real good deal from T-Mobile if like me, you don’t actually use your phone much for calls. For $30 monthly you can get into 100 minutes, unlimited texts and 5GB of data. This is one of the best prepaid wireless deals so far.
AT&T Go Phone
AT&T is the most confusing of theme all with four different options for prepaid wireless plans and they are:
$25.00 – 250 minutes, unlimited text and add 50MB of data for $5.00
$40.00 – 500 minutes, unlimited text, and 200mb of data
$50.00 – Unlimited text, unlimited calls and wifi only data
$60.00 – Unlimited talk and text, and 2GB of data.
They’re just OK, and I think you could do better with other providers.
Virgin Mobile
Virgin Mobile offers 3 different prepaid wireless plans. Essentially small, medium and large:
$35.00 – 300 minutes, unlimited messaging and data
$45.00 – 1200 minutes, unlimited messaging and data
$55.00 – unlimited talk, text and data
Boost Mobile
Boost Wireless features one plan. $50 a month gets you unlimited everything. Stick with ‘em for the long term and your bill shrinks over time up to a $15.00 a month savings. Finally, a cellular provider that rewards current customers.
Ting
Want the cheapest prepaid plan ever? How about 9 bucks a month? That’s what the Ting plans start at and allow you to mix and match your data/text/calls to get a custom plan that suits you the best.
Straight talk is unlimited everything for $45.00 a month with no contract.
What’s the best one? That $9 offer from Ting is hard to resist, but if you prefer service from one of the big four carriers the T-mobile $30.00 deal is a good bet too.
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