My mouth is agape. I would kill for a fair, per-GB smartphone plan here in the United States. $10/GB, no matter whether it's your phone, your tablet/netbook/laptop tethered to your phone, etc.
The U.S. prices really are ridiculous – what about Canada?
Also on the .eu side, I pay 13.90€/mo for an unlimited and uncapped dual-SIM data plan, i.e. phone and mobile broadband. The regular phone plan is an additional 0.66€/mo + 0.066€ per text or minute (I chose no package since I use those very little).
My prepaid plan entailed: 1000 minutes calls in my home network (biggest carrier), 200 minutes to all other networks (roaming is extra but the tariff is capped), 1000 SMS and MMS messages, 1GB Data - for 15€.
Now they raised the price a bit: I only get 100MB data and the price got raised to 19€, however I can get 100MB extra for 2€ or 500MB extra for 4.5€ or 1GB extra for 6€.
Mostly the 100MB is enough for my needs (excellent WIFI coverage most of the time).
However - we pay bigger prices for our smartphones, but completely worth it IMO.
The phones of both provides are sold unlocked per default and all providers here use compatible frequency ranges for GSM and UMTS. That means that you don't have any problems using a phone from one provider with another provider. Plans of those providers also do not have any "minimum duration" - so you can quit at any time (although there's not really a reason for this, as most of the plans do not have monthly fixed costs, but only the variable costs).
Of course there are also other, more expensive providers with things like minimum contract durations and so on. But unless you want to buy a subsidized iPhone there's not really a reason to use them.
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4 Euros per GB per month
My mouth is agape. I would kill for a fair, per-GB smartphone plan here in the United States. $10/GB, no matter whether it's your phone, your tablet/netbook/laptop tethered to your phone, etc.
The U.S. prices really are ridiculous – what about Canada?
Also on the .eu side, I pay 13.90€/mo for an unlimited and uncapped dual-SIM data plan, i.e. phone and mobile broadband. The regular phone plan is an additional 0.66€/mo + 0.066€ per text or minute (I chose no package since I use those very little).
Also EU user...
My prepaid plan entailed: 1000 minutes calls in my home network (biggest carrier), 200 minutes to all other networks (roaming is extra but the tariff is capped), 1000 SMS and MMS messages, 1GB Data - for 15€.
Now they raised the price a bit: I only get 100MB data and the price got raised to 19€, however I can get 100MB extra for 2€ or 500MB extra for 4.5€ or 1GB extra for 6€.
Mostly the 100MB is enough for my needs (excellent WIFI coverage most of the time).
However - we pay bigger prices for our smartphones, but completely worth it IMO.
That's seriously unbelievable. Honestly, can you hook me up with a link that has some deets? I'm just in shock. What a racket.
Here's the Austrian provider that I use: http://www.bob.at/ (but there are also other cheap providers here such as http://yesss.at/). Both providers act as MVNO (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_virtual_network_operator) using the net of a larger provider - therefore you typically have a very good wireless coverage.
The phones of both provides are sold unlocked per default and all providers here use compatible frequency ranges for GSM and UMTS. That means that you don't have any problems using a phone from one provider with another provider. Plans of those providers also do not have any "minimum duration" - so you can quit at any time (although there's not really a reason for this, as most of the plans do not have monthly fixed costs, but only the variable costs).
Of course there are also other, more expensive providers with things like minimum contract durations and so on. But unless you want to buy a subsidized iPhone there's not really a reason to use them.